II: spring

I only have to tell my supervisor once that I know where he parks his car. He immediately finds a new parking space. This displays tactical awareness. This suggests that he has, in fact, been listening. I am pleasantly surprised.

It takes a full twenty minutes to locate his new parking space. It is in the middle of one of the smaller car parks on the eastern side of the hospital, which is bounded on three sides by manicured shrubs. The Ox Mountains round-shouldered and skulking in the distance.

He chooses this location because his office window, three floors up, offers panoramic views of the entire car park. This suggests that he is a thinker. This suggests cunning. This suggests that he is the kind of strategist who presumes his foe also clocks off for lunch.

I loiter at the end of the corridor until he emerges from his office, locks the door and saunters towards the elevators. I take the stairs to the basement floor. He is sitting at the far end of the canteen, eating in the company of two other supervisors.

I make my way out to the car park on the east side and smoke a career-threatening cigarette. When the cigarette is finished I thread my way through the lines of parked cars to his Opel Corsa. I drop the butt at the driver’s door and grind it flat.

Blood roars in my ears. Tomorrow I invade Poland, etc.

 

 

‘I know you probably won’t be interested in this,’ Cassie says, ‘but . . .’

We are in Zanzibar, a coffee bar on Old Market Street, seated at a counter beside the plate-glass window looking out at the pigeon-soiled statue of Lady Erin. While Cassie tells me what it is she thinks I won’t be interested in, I ponder on how women start out trying to fuck their fathers and wind up fending off their prepubescent sons.

I wonder if the waitress, who is Polish, might inadvertently yelp something containing guttural vowels at her moment of climax.

I despair at how a woman’s sexual peak arrives just as her visible feminine attributes begin to sag, expand, wrinkle and dissipate.

Lady Erin was erected to commemorate the insurgents who rose against British rule in 1798. Over the years, the descendants of said insurgents have vandalised Lady Erin, by repeatedly breaking off her upright arm.

I sympathise with her, as I sympathise with Diana, who still peers down horrified from Olympus as Herostratus burns her temple to the ground in order that posterity might afford him a footnote.

I think about how women who are enlightened enough to realise that men probably won’t be interested in what they have to say have mined a nugget akin to a glass diamond.

‘So what do you think?’ Cassie says.

‘About what?’

‘You weren’t listening, were you?’

‘Not to you, no.’

‘Who then?’

‘Diana.’

She blinks, then cocks an ear to the stereo. ‘Diana Ross?’

‘Diana. The goddess who had her temple burned down by a man who wanted to be remembered.’

‘What has that to do with anything?’

‘Isn’t that why we’re together? So I can eventually destroy your temple and be remembered?’

‘What’re you talking about, temples?’

‘The body is a temple, Cass. A child’s passage through the vaginal canal is an act of destruction. Hips crack, abdominal plates split. There is sundry ripping and tearing. All so my name can percolate down through the generations.’

I use the word ‘percolate’ because we are in a coffee shop.

Cassie stares at me for a long time, then turns away to gaze out at Lady Erin. She spoons the cream in her cappuccino and says, ‘K, how come you have to make everything more difficult than it really is?’

‘Nothing’s more difficult than it really is, Cass. The myth that something can be easier than it really is was invented by Hoover salesmen.’

‘You know your problem?’ She shakes her head despairingly. ‘You don’t have the imagination to see how things can be better.’

Cassie’s problem is that she thinks I only have one problem.

My line for today comes courtesy of Dame Iris Murdoch: You can live or tell; not both at once.

 

•

 

‘If you’re aiming for reverse psychology,’ I say, ‘you’re laying it on a bit thick.’

‘What’s the best way to get a woman’s attention?’ he says, putting down his sheet of paper.

‘Pretend you don’t care.’

‘Treat ’em mean,’ he says, ‘keep ’em keen.’

‘There’s mean,’ I say, ‘and there’s being an antisocial bastard.’

‘Relax, it’s a first draft. I can always go back in and kill any babies you don’t like.’

The quality of our entente cordiale is somewhat strained. Billy is adamant he had nothing to do with Rosie crawling into the shed, that he would have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

‘Put it this way,’ he’d said. ‘You’re a bit fragile about the writing as it is. How would you feel about it if anything happened to Rosie?’

‘Writing wouldn’t come into it. I’d be struggling to get out of bed in the morning.’

‘Exactly. And where would that leave me?’

‘In limbo, I know. All I’m saying is, it’s a bit of a coincidence that something happened to Rosie after we had that chat about killing babies.’

‘You’re reading too much into it, man. Besides, if memory serves, you’re the one who was up for killing babies.’

‘Only as a metaphor. You’re the one planning to blow up a hospital.’

‘Only as a metaphor.’

‘It’s not the same thing.’

‘Isn’t it?’

Billy believes that I am Neville Chamberlain, waving the pages of the latest manuscript around to convince myself that he and I have peace in our time.

I prefer to think of myself as Churchill in the early months of 1940, boozing away the phoney war and wishing the Japs would hurry up and bomb Pearl Harbour.

I’m under no illusions. It’s only a matter of time before his blitz begins.

The Big Question: which of us will get to split the atom first?

‘So what’ve you got?’ he says, nodding at my side of the table.

‘You meet the old guy for the first time.’

‘Yeah,’ he says softly. ‘I liked him.’

 

•

 

‘Being old is like being hung-over all day, every day,’ the old man says. His voice crackles like a dusty ’78. ‘The worst hangover you’ve ever had. So bad you wanted to do nothing but cry but you were afraid snuffling your snot would split your skull. Imagine that all day, every day,’ he says.

This man is seventy-nine years old. In theory, he should be dead. In Ireland, statistically speaking, men die at seventy-two and women at seventy-five. This is nature’s way of affording women the opportunity of covering every possible conversational gambit vis-a-vis the latest manifestation of male betrayal.

‘People don’t get how someone might want to die,’ the old man says. He has recently had his leg amputated at the knee, lest the gangrene that began with an infected ingrown toenail spread like bushfire through dry kindling. ‘They don’t understand that everything winds down,’ he says. ‘They don’t want to face the fact that all engines wear out.’

The will to live is an invisible engine, with its own pumps and valves and in-built obsolescence.

The old man chooses a peach-flavoured yoghurt and a bar of plain Dairy Milk chocolate from the trolley. ‘You know you’re old when you can’t eat the Fruit ‘n’ Nut anymore,’ he says.

‘The nurse tells me you were a mechanic,’ I say.

His hands shake, so that his fingers can gain no purchase on the chocolate’s gold foil. I take the bar, peel back some of the wrapper, hand it over. He’s nodding his head. ‘That’s right,’ he says, ‘for near on forty years.’ His chest rumbles when he breathes. He begins sucking on a corner of the Dairy Milk. ‘Cars today, who’d be arsed fixing them up?’

I note that he has to buy his own chocolate and yoghurt from my concession cart. That his pyjama collar is grimy. These things tell me that visitors come rarely, if at all. His hair is lush, white as the pillowcase on which it flares. His face is deeply lined, but softly, so he resembles a post-coital Beckett. The eyes are rheumy, red-limned.

‘Something I’ve always wanted to ask a mechanic,’ I say.

The faded blue eyes sparkle. ‘Is that a fact?’ He pats his leg. ‘Fire away, son, I’m going nowhere.’

‘See, in the movies, when someone cuts a brake cable halfway through, so the car only crashes later. Does that really work?’

The bushy eyebrows flicker, then mesh. ‘Is there someone you don’t like, son?’

I laugh, quietly, so as not to disturb the other patients. ‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘I’m a writer, I’m working on a short story where a car crashes. I just want to know if that brake cable thing works. I don’t want any mechanics reading the story and not taking it seriously.’

He doesn’t believe me. But his eyes sparkle. He’s looking at one last opportunity for mischief with no possible repercussions. ‘Tell me the story,’ he says, ‘and I’ll let you know if it sounds wrong.’

I sketch the outline of a story involving a fatal car accident. He sucks on his chocolate. When I’m finished, he nods. ‘That sounds alright,’ he says. ‘I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the actual details. But the story’s rubbish.’

‘That’s what’s wrong with the world today,’ I say. ‘Everyone’s a critic.’

He laughs, but it collapses into a rumbling cough. His whole body shudders. The plastic tubes rattle like a ship’s rigging in a gale. When the spasm passes he gasps, ‘What’s wrong with the world today, son, is mechanics don’t read short stories.’

‘Maybe you’ve a point at that,’ I say. ‘See you tomorrow night.’

I leave the ward, the cart’s wheels squeaking like uppity slave mice. I’m thinking about how the will to live is an invisible engine, with its own pumps and valves. I’m thinking about how engines can be jump-started if only you can pump enough juice through the leads. I’m thinking about how engines can be scuppered with something as simple as a handful of sugar.

 

 

I meet Frankie for a coffee in the hospital canteen. We chat football for a bit, talk up the Rovers’ chances against Shams on Friday night, but Frankie seems distracted, irritable.

‘Don’t suppose you’ve seen Tommo?’ I say. ‘I’ve a couple of books for him in my locker, he was supposed to pick them up yesterday.’

‘Tommo got the boot,’ he says. ‘Austin too.’

‘No way.’

He nods, glum. ‘I got in a load of shit for being away from the desk, covering for those fuckers. So I had to write a report.’

‘What’d you say?’

‘Nothing. Just that the boys were out sick that day, and I had to cover the monitors.’

‘And they got the boot for that?’

‘It wasn’t just that. When they checked the records, they realised the boys were out sick about five days in every forty. So they got sent for a check-up, standard procedure, to make sure they didn’t have some long-term infection that could screw the patients.’

‘So?’

‘So they had to take a pee test.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Fuckin’ A. The guy doing the test got stoned off the whiff of their piss.’

‘Half their luck.’

‘Tell me about it. And with the cutbacks, the non-recruitment of non-essential staff, they’re not taking on any replacements.’

‘So who’s doing their jobs?’

Frankie jabs a thumb into his chest. ‘They’ve given me a promotion,’ he says, ‘made me Divisional Representative. Whatever the fuck that is.’

‘So now you’re a supervisor with no one to supervise.’

‘That’s about it, yeah.’

‘Okay. But if it’s Tommo and Austin’s work you’re doing, you’ll hardly break a sweat.’

‘I know.’ He drains the dregs of his coffee. ‘But still, the boys were mates.’ He glances at his watch, then stands up. ‘C’mon,’ he says, ‘we’d better get back or we’ll be next for the heave-ho.’

‘If you want a pint later on, have a chat, just give me a buzz.’

‘Will do.’

 

•

 

‘Is that it?’ I say. ‘You’re dumping Tommo and Austin?’

Billy, nibbling on a hangnail, just shrugs.

‘So how’s it feel?’

‘Not good,’ he says. ‘Like Frankie says, the boys were mates. And the way things are these days, it’s not like they’re going to just waltz into another gig.’

‘It’s tough out there, alright. But look, Billy, it’s not your fault the boys were stoners.’

‘I could’ve had them get their act together, pack in the dope.’

‘Except the object of the exercise was to cut them dead, see if you could face wiping out a whole hospital.’

‘I know, yeah.’

‘So what d’you think?’

‘I dunno. I need to absorb this one first, see how it goes.’

‘Not easy, is it?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Austin, okay, he’s a bit of a dick. Tommo’s a good bloke, though.’

‘Was,’ I say. ‘Past tense.’

He stares. ‘I only got them sacked,’ he says. ‘It’s not like I killed them off or anything.’

‘Same difference, though, isn’t it? I mean, they’re gone now.’

‘Gone from the hospital, yeah.’

‘What,’ I say, ‘you think they’re just going to hang out in their apartment getting blitzed?’

A hunted look in his eye. ‘How’m I supposed to know what they’ll––’

‘They’ve just lost their jobs, Billy. How will they buy weed? How’ll they pay rent? I mean, there’s consequences. Every action an equal and opposite reaction, all that.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Cut off without even a redundancy payment . . .’ I’m enjoying this now, Billy’s hangdog expression. ‘Those boys want to work again, they’ll be off to Canada, Australia. Except they’re unskilled, they’re hospital porters. Who’s going to want them?’

‘What would you have done?’

‘If I’d wanted them gone?’ I shrug. ‘I don’t know. If I liked them, they just weren’t useful anymore, I’d have taken care of them. Put them in car accident or something, Austin’s driving, he’s bliftered . . . Nothing too serious, mind. Just enough to put them in wheelchairs, get them a disability benefit, so they could sit around toking all day.’

‘Not much of a life, that,’ Billy says.

‘Depends on who you are. I’d say Austin’d be okay with it.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Still,’ I say, ‘at least your way they won’t be going up in flames when the hospital blows.’

‘True enough.’ He straightens up, crumples the sheet of paper, tosses it on the pile. ‘I’ll have another bash at it tonight.’

‘That’s the spirit. What else have you got?’

He draws another sheet of paper from his folder. ‘I’ve had another go at the Cassie novel.’

‘I thought we were dumping that.’

‘Bear with me,’ he says. ‘I think I might be on to something.’

 

•

 

Sermo Vulgus: A Novel (Excerpt)

 

Cassie, you said diamonds were stone bewildered, confused and frightened by the glow in their soul. We are machines, you said, churning out rusted flakes of misunderstanding, but diamonds are doubts radiating hope.

Cassie, you said you would never wear diamonds. Diamonds, you said, are smug egos. They are too hard, you said, hard as the bones our yesterdays gnaw. You said only braided lightning would grace your finger; only a garland woven from a re-leafed oak would adorn your head. Can’t we at least try, you said, to draw a straight line through the heart of every sun?

Cassie, you quoted Schoendoerffer on grey eyes: ‘Grey eyes are peculiar in that they betray no emotion, and in its absence one cannot help imagining a world of violence and passion behind their gaze.’ I think you wished your eyes were Schoendoerffer grey, but they were wide and candid and the colour of indecision.

Cassie, you were no reader of French. Thus I challenge the legitimacy of your perceptions. Now, when it is already too late, I dare you to consider that Xan Fielding’s translation of Farewell to the King improved Schoendoerffer’s original text.

Cassie, I beg you to admit possibility. For your approval I posit the hypothesis that nothing is impossible so long as we are prepared to consider its possibility. Only in an infinite universe can hope spring eternal.

Cassie, it is possible to try to braid lightning, to re-leaf your oak, to draw a straight line through the heart of every sun. Cassie, it is possible to try at least. It is still legitimate to hope, even now, when the ash of the Six Million falls with the acid rain.

Cassie, are we really so far gone?

 

•

 

‘You’ve read Farewell to the King?’

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I liked the cover.’

‘Why, what’s it look like?’

‘Your cover, I mean.’

‘Oh.’ My copy of Farewell to the King I found in a second-hand bookshop, crudely covered with a blank sheet of cheap leather binding. A blind orphan, swaddled. A good novel, I think, but my favourite book. A precious artefact excavated from the dross. The idea that someone would go to all that trouble to rebind an old paperback had me blinking back tears, so that the assistant asked me was I okay as I handed over the euro coin it cost to give it a good home.

Billy reaches into his satchel, takes out the book. ‘I borrowed it last week,’ he said. ‘Sorry, I meant to ask, but then Rosie wound up in the shed and, y’know.’

‘No worries.’

It takes everything I have not to punch my pencil into his Newman-blue eye. Because that book isn’t just a book, it’s a touchstone for how much some people love books; and not just books, but the weakest, the most disposable. Whoever bound that book could just as easily have tossed a coverless paperback in the trash, an object that was worthless by any practical assessment. And yet they covered it, crudely it has to be said, but that’s not the point, they took the time and invested the craft to ensure that the words would be protected, the delicacy of it preserved. I can only presume that whoever covered that book had died, and their collection of books sold as a job lot, for why would they go to all that effort just to sell it second-hand, especially as no bookseller in his right mind would pay good money for a ragged paperback bound in cheap blank leather?

I cried that day in the bookshop for the poignancy of it, certainly, out of a lachrymose sentimentality for the blind orphan who found safe haven, but also because I knew I had finally discovered the person I wanted to write for, the one mythical listener every writer needs, my ghost audience and reader eternal.

‘Have you anything else like that?’ he says. ‘That was pretty good.’

‘No, I’ve nothing else like that.’

He nods towards the chalet. ‘What about those Russians you have on the shelf?’

‘It’s a different kind of thing.’

‘Just as well,’ he says. ‘I mean, who can read those Russians? The characters’ names are nearly short stories in themselves.’

‘Being honest, they’re only there for show. Them and Kafka. And Beckett.’

‘Thank Christ for that,’ he says. ‘I was worried I might be the only moron around here.’

 

•

 

Today is a Red Letter day. Today was worth the wanton massacre of oxygen molecules required to keep me alive.

Early this morning a nurse discovered an old woman dead in her bed. There are suggestions that the death was premature. There are hints that the old woman’s miserable existence, eked out between bouts of excruciating bowel pain, was abruptly terminated.

Mrs McCaffrey’s was the third unusual death in nineteen months. All three suffered from chronic agonies with no hope of reprieve. All three had private rooms. Mrs McCaffrey appears to have been smothered with her own pillow, an embroidered affair she’d brought from her home when she realised she was in for the long haul.

Rumours surge along the corridors. Scandal plummets down elevator shafts. The speed of light is left standing in the traps. There are uninspired whispers about an Angel of Death. The word ‘euthanasia’ enjoys a hushed renaissance.

Despite the best efforts of the hospital’s board of directors, the cops are called in. They are, however, discreet. They are aware of the delicate nature of the situation. People cannot afford to believe that a hospital could be a place where people can die willy-nilly. There are research grants at stake here.

I am called for an interview, held in the office of the director of public relations on the sixth floor. It is a big, airy office. Potted plants feature. I sit in the leather chair and immediately feel my posture improve.

The cops ask if I was working last night. I tell them I was. They already know this.

They ask if I knew Mrs McCaffrey. Yes, I say. They already know this too.

They ask if I visited her last night with my concession cart.

‘Not last night, no.’

‘How come?’ says the cop with the salt-and-pepper hair.

‘She doesn’t like anything on the cart,’ I say. ‘I’ve offered to bring her anything she wants, but she can’t eat normal stuff. I think she has bowel cancer. Or had, rather.’

‘See anything unusual on your rounds last night?’

‘It’s a hospital. Pretty much everything that goes on around here is unusual.’

‘Okay. But was there anyone around who shouldn’t have been? Anything out of the ordinary?’

‘Not that I can think of, no.’

The other cop has florid jowls and porcine eyes. He taps a folder on the desk in front of him. ‘It says here you’ve been the subject of a number of disciplinary procedures.’

‘That’s not exactly a crime.’

He bristles. ‘We’ll decide what is and what’s not a crime.’

‘No, you don’t. If you want to criminalise attitude, call a referendum. Then we’ll decide what’s a crime and what isn’t, and you’ll enforce the laws we vote in. That’s the peachy thing about democracy.’

‘How come you’re trying to be difficult?’

The way he says it, I am now officially Public Enemy Number 1. This is a man who needs enemies. This is a man who needs justification for the chip on his shoulder and has found his vocation as a vampire feeding off crime.

‘I’m not trying to be difficult,’ I say. ‘I’m co-operating. Anyway, how would mentioning my rights be making things difficult?’

Salty Pepper says, ‘How long have you worked here?’

‘That’s in the file, along with the disciplinary stuff.’

‘Do you like your job?’

‘It’s a job. And I like meeting new people.’

‘You get to see many people die during the course of your duties?’

‘Some. You?’

He sucks on a discoloured front tooth. ‘How does that make you feel, watching people die? I mean, are you comfortable with seeing people in pain?’

‘Not especially. But you get used to anything if you stick at it long enough.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

Florid Jowls cuts in. ‘Say someone begs you to end their life, to do them a favour and put them out of their misery – what do you do?’

‘I call a nurse. They’re obviously in need of a shot of morphine, something along those lines.’

‘Did Mrs McCaffrey ever talk about wanting to die?’

‘Not that I remember. But I don’t think she had a lot to live for.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘She talked about how no one ever came to visit her. She said her husband died four years ago.’ They already know this. ‘People can die of a broken heart,’ I say. ‘That’s a medical fact. Hearts can actually break.’

‘So you did talk to her.’

‘She talked to me. I listened. Old people who are dying only want one thing, the chance to tell their story. To pass their lives on. All they want to believe is that life hasn’t been a stupid waste of time.’

Florid Jowls says, ‘And you told her that?’

‘Sure. What’s it cost to tell a dying person a lie?’

‘When’s the last time you saw Mrs McCaffrey?’ Salty Pepper says.

‘About three nights ago.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Certain, yeah.’

‘Okay,’ Florid Jowls says, ‘you can go. But we might want to talk to you again.’

I head for the door. ‘A word to the wise,’ Salty Pepper says. ‘No one likes a smart-arse.’

‘Not everyone needs to be liked,’ I say.

I can tell, by the way his eyes narrow, that he is not unaccustomed to considering this concept. I close the door behind me and breathe quick, shallow breaths. Blood roars in my ears. Tomorrow I bomb Nagasaki, etc.

 

 

My supervisor takes the cigarette butt hint and finds a new parking space. This time it takes me a whole hour to find his Opel Corsa, out back of the ambulance station to the rear of the hospital.

Strictly speaking, this is illegal. No non-essential vehicles of any description are allowed in this area. A kid propping his bike against the wall is looking at a hefty fine for interfering with an emergency service. A badly parked car could obstruct an ambulance on its way to resuscitate a coronary victim. Each minute that elapses before an ambulance reaches a coronary victim reduces his chances of survival by 10 percent, give or take.

There was a time when Sirens lured and seduced; today they alert and alarm. Ambulances are the all-wailing, all-blaring placebos of our generation. A flashing blue siren has replaced the Sacred Heart flame. The stench of burning rubber has become our incense. In CPR we trust.

My supervisor has violated this covenant. He has parked his non-essential Opel Corsa in a restricted zone. It is my duty to reprimand him.

I wear a ring fashioned into an Ouroborous, an ancient symbol of intertwined snakes, one depicting imminent annihilation, the other rising hope. In Asian cultures, the snakes become dragons. I have sawn through this ring so that one jagged edge overlaps the other. I dig this jagged edge into the paintwork of my supervisor’s Opel Corsa and gouge a line the length of the passenger side. In theory, this means he will not discover the gouging until long after he has left the hospital grounds.

My line for today is, Why stop now, just when I’m hating it? (Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

 

 

Cassie is a beautiful woman. This makes her difficult to live with.

Sex stunts the imagination, narrows focus, and diminishes the contemplation of perspective, scale or the possibility of diversions. Sex is an Opel Corsa careering downhill on a steep one-way street. Sex is half-chewed fuel-lines. Sex is dying before your time. Sex is defying destiny. Sex is waving two fingers in the face of infinity, and then slipping said fingers into infinity’s lubricated vagina. Sex is hoping infinity gets off first.

Cass is a finicky eater, an amateur photographer and a book club enthusiast. She admires minimalist two-tone interior design. When she was a child she wanted to be a blacksmith. Today she works as a physiotherapist. When we first met I thought ‘physiotherapy’ was massage parlour code. I was to be disappointed, but by then I didn’t care.

Today is my day off. We meet for lunch in town. It is a mild, bright day, the first real swallow of summer, the sun a bowl of peach punch drained. We skip the food and grab some take-out coffee, find a bench down along the river. We talk and watch the river flow by.

This is always an enjoyable experience. Cass is generous with her time and spirit. She possesses the rare talent of making everyone feel at ease in her company, a skill and gift essential in her professional life. She listens when other people speak. This attentiveness is flattering, even after you realise Cassie listens no matter who is speaking and regardless of the topic being discussed. Conversing with Cassie is like whistling into a soaked sponge. She hears everything but absorbs nothing. This is one reason I like Cassie.

Another reason is that she takes a double-D cup size. I was not breast-fed as a baby. I was a puny youth, five feet four inches when I first began to masturbate. For most of the two decades since, I have masturbated at least once a day.

While Cassie talks, I calculate that, were it not for masturbation stunting my growth, I would be twelve feet seven inches by now.

 

•

 

‘I was wondering,’ Billy says.

‘Yeah?’

‘How come, in the original draft, you made me a midget?’

‘As I recall, the idea was so that you’d have a Napoleon complex.’

‘It wasn’t to make yourself feel taller?’

‘Why would I want that?’

‘Everyone wants to be taller,’ he says. ‘A man needs stature.’

‘Danny DeVito seems to be making out okay.’

He grins. ‘That was funny, in Get Shorty, the way they had Danny DeVito playing an actor who plays Napoleon. Remember?’

‘Hilarious, yeah.’

‘What’s wrong?’ he says. ‘Something up?’

‘Nothing, no. Why?’

‘You seem a bit off this morning.’

‘Not at all. I was just thinking that you’re what, an inch taller than me now?’

‘Does that bother you?’

‘Not in the slightest.’

‘I could lop off an inch if you want.’

‘Don’t be daft. It’s not an issue.’

‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’

‘I’m certain.’

‘Okay. So what’s next?’

I consult my notes. ‘You were rejigging another excerpt from the Cassie novel.’

‘Try this instead,’ he says, handing across a sheet of paper.

‘What is it?’

‘That time with Cassie, in Zanzibar, when you had me talking about the Temple of Diana? That got me thinking.’

 

•

 

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were the Pyramid at Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus at Rhodes, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Lighthouse at Alexandria, and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

Known to the Romans as Diana, Artemis was the Greek goddess of the moon, the forest, hunting, witchcraft and childbirth. Although herself a virgin, she was also a fertility goddess.

The architectural apex where culture, history and philosophy met, the Temple of Artemis was one of the most important edifices of its day, and arguably the most important. So it should have been no surprise to anyone when Herostratus burned it to the floor one night in 365 BCE.

A mediocre man, Herostratus turned to destruction in his bid for immortality. The arson was deliberately engineered in an attempt to be remembered by posterity, which was where Herostratus went wrong. The point of destroying buildings is not to be remembered, nor to become the patron saint of the disaffected. Nor should it be for the simple pleasure of seeing things burn. The point is to destroy something people revere. This may or may not result in people thinking twice about taking things for granted. This may or may not result in people asking why.

In the aftermath, Herostratus’s name was banned on pain of death by the city elders. Ironically, it was this censorship, rather than the act itself, which ensured his name would be remembered. The inhabitants of Ephesus circa 365 BCE were no less curious, stupid or dazzled by celebrity than we are today.

Sadly for Herostratus, legend has it that on the same night in 365 BCE, not too far from Ephesus – in Macedonia, to be precise – a baby called Alexander was born.

I like to imagine Herostratus on a ridge overlooking Ephesus, howling at the moon as the distant flames flicker across his deranged features. This is Man versus Space, Time and All Points Between, with Man coming home three lengths clear. This is Herostratus taking his place in a pantheon that includes Lucifer, Prometheus, Cain, Judas, Martin Luther, Kepler, Galileo and Darwin. This is simmering resentment boiling over, disaffection coming home to roost, hate crackling like bottled lightning. This is the natural order exacting retribution on the complacency that presumes to recline on a couch of innate superiority. This is Jimmy Cagney atop an oil derrick screaming, ‘Top o’ the world, Ma!’

My line for today is an exercise in wishful thinking: There might be Herostratuses who would set fire to the temple where their own images are worshipped. (Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human)

 

 

The old man has heard about Mrs McCaffrey. The rumour has slipped into his ward beneath the ebb and flow of aimless conversation to circle the foot of the beds, waiting for the unwary to dip a toe. The rumour has flicked its tail and glided out of the ward again, and the flicking tail has slapped the old man in the face. He appears gaunted, frightened. He is an old man adrift on a strange bed beneath which circles a rumour of premature oblivion.

‘I’m not ready to go yet, son,’ he says.

‘Wouldn’t it be worse if you were and couldn’t?’ I say. But he’s not listening.

‘What age was she?’ he says.

‘Eighty-one.’

He does the math. The bushy eyebrows mesh as he concentrates. He has two years on her. This is of little consolation to a one-legged ex-mechanic who knows a thing or two about how all engines wear out in the end.

‘I played centre-back for Coolera the year we won the double,’ he says. His eyes take on a misty, faraway aspect. The thousand-year stare. ‘The summer of ’61,’ he says. ‘League and Championship, unbeaten in all competitions. For the final they switched me away from centre-back out to the right. Their best player played out there, and he was good and fast, but he didn’t score that day.’

He says this proudly, speaking a little louder than usual. This is not for my benefit. This is so the rumours will hear and understand they are not dealing with any little old ladies this time.

‘What’s the one thing you most regret not doing?’ I say.

He flinches. The dying are not immune to cruelty. ‘No regrets, son,’ he says, but the jaw muscles tighten beneath their frosting of stubble. Even the dying have their pride. The dying have little else.

‘When I was a youngster,’ he concedes, ‘I was at a game, I think my father might have been playing but I wasn’t old enough to be interested. I was just wandering around the field playing with a little motorcar, it was my older brother’s. And these knackers, four or five of them, about my age, they came out of nowhere and they wanted the motorcar. I shouldn’t have given it to them, it was my brother’s, but all I could think of was the four or five of them sitting on me and I could smell them, they made me sick. So I gave them the car. They went off laughing.’

His eyes gleam with more than moisture. ‘I can still smell the fuckers now,’ he says. He looks up at me. ‘It was my brother’s car,’ he says. ‘He died eight year ago now.’

I nod. ‘The mortality rate of the travelling community is significantly lower than that of the settled community,’ I say. ‘Those travellers are probably all dead now. When the time comes, you might even see them on the other side. And the thing about heaven is, you get to live through eternity the way you want to. You’ll probably wake up in heaven as a centre-back. When you do, go looking for those tinkers. Eternity’s a long time, you could go back every day and whale on the fuckers until it’s time for ambrosia and nectar elevenses.’

‘Where’d you hear that one, about living in heaven the way you want to?’

‘The Pope came out with it a few years ago,’ I lie. ‘In an encyclical, the time he abolished hell.’

‘I didn’t hear about that one,’ he says.

‘That’s because no one listens to the Pope anymore.’

‘Isn’t that the God’s truth?’

I stand up. ‘Anything else you need?’

‘No thanks, son.’

He hasn’t paid for the Dairy Milk and peach yoghurt yet, but I take the hit. I lean in, so no one else can hear. ‘Mrs McCaffrey died in a private room,’ I say. ‘So don’t worry about it. Patients in public wards have nothing to fear.’

He looks up at me, frowning, his eyes pale-blue whirlpools of fear and indecision.

The old are easily frightened. The old are the young turned inside out and upside down. The old are the young knowing more than any child should. The old remember what it is to be young, weak and terrified, and they do not have revenge fantasies to sustain them.

The old know that bullies do not melt away when you fight back. The old have shuffled around to the rear of the bike sheds after school and are being kicked in the kidneys by Time, snivelling while Death slaps their face open-handed.

The old have had their books stomped in a puddle once too often. The old have no big brothers who know ju-jitsu.

 

 

The people we should be talking to are winos, milkmen, pest-control operatives, miners, bouncers, whores, thieves, cab drivers, ex-cops and the guy who gives out change at the amusement arcade.

Ask those who can see in the dark. Practically all of the universe exists in a state of permanent night.

When the insomnia beds in I walk the streets. I venture down unlit alleyways to slip and slide on the detritus of split refuse sacks, on offal waste, on the slime oozing up through cracks in the paving. I paddle in overflowing drains.

I trip over a pair of outstretched legs. These legs belong to a tramp, a bum, a lush. A non-contributor.

I do not wake him. He has been awake all along, watching me come.

He scrambles to his feet and emerges into the faint orange light. His hair is matted, wild and grey. His eyes burn like embers. He is The Watcher, and he resents being watched. He makes threatening gestures, like a goose hooshing cattle.

I stand my ground.

He is foul-mouthed. He tries to roar but the raw wheeze suggests his vocal cords have seized for the want of social lubrication. His voice cracks. His face is the colour of jam sponge scrapings, the breath harsh as petrol. I smell methylated spirits.

By now his face is nose-to-nose with mine. He is ranting, the cracked lips flecked with spittle. I hold my Zippo up to the side of his face. The flame allows me to see his eyes properly. The whites are jaundiced, the pupils dilated.

He hesitates. He sputters to a halt. In the quietness that follows I hear an eerie high-pitched squeaking.

‘In an urban environment,’ I say, ‘the ratio of rats to humans is nine-to-one.’

He stares. He croaks a foul imprecation that tails off halfway through. His shoulders slump, and the eyes narrow down into hard-cornered triangles.

I allow the Zippo to flicker out. I hold up the cardboard beaker I am carrying in my other hand. I say, ‘Old man, how would a cup of hot coffee taste right now?’

 

•

 

‘So now there’s an Angel of Death,’ he says, ‘and an Angel of Mercy?’

‘That’s the way it was,’ I say. ‘We don’t have to keep it that way.’

‘It’s too blatant,’ he says. ‘Too Jekyll and Hyde.’

‘So we scrap the Angel of Mercy?’

‘I think so, yeah.’

I make a note. ‘Consider it done.’

 

•

 

Sermo Vulgus: A Novel (Excerpt)

 

Cassie, the flesh is an abomination. This is the logic of all religions, even the Buddhists, who consider themselves above and beyond religion.

Religion demands that the flesh be mortified, mutilated, disowned and discarded.

Yet I am flesh, Cassie, the flesh of flesh. Even now I can feel the blood ebbing through the capillaries of my flaccid penis, as tentative, as irrepressible, as the very first tide.

Cassie, to reject the flesh is to reject a logic so implacable that it requires no explanation or justification. To wit: we were born to enflesh. We are our means to an end, and our end to our means. There is Fucking, then Everything Else.

Think on this, Cassie: the scientists and priests agree that eternity exists. The scientists and priests agree on the theory of infinity. But only the priests pledge to abstain for all eternity. Only the priests resolve to set themselves against the implacable logic of the universe for so long as it exists.

Cassie, have you the courage to join the dog-collared rebels on the barricades while they eternally rail against the will of their god?

 

•

 

‘Anyone ever tell you,’ Billy says, ‘that you have serious issues with priests?’

‘It’s nothing personal. It’s more a zeitgeist thing.’

He ponders that awhile. Behind him one of the carp, a flash of orange, breaks the surface of the pond and is gone again.

‘What are we supposed to be saying, though?’ he says. ‘That I was abused by a priest?’

‘Not explicitly, no.’

‘I don’t even know any priests,’ he says. ‘I mean, you never even gave me a childhood.’

‘Like I say, it’s not a personalised thing. It’s more to do with the idea of innocence being abused by religion.’

‘I’m only one man,’ he says. ‘There’s only so much I can shoulder. You don’t think you’re asking me to do too much here?

‘The truly great leaders,’ he adds, ‘had this notion where they’d never ask anyone to do anything they wouldn’t do themselves.’

‘Except I’m not leading you, Billy. We’re collaborating.’

He smirks. It’s there and gone like a flash of carp, so fast I’m not even sure I’ve seen it.

‘What?’ I say. ‘What am I missing here?’

‘How d’you mean?’ he says.

‘What was the smirk in aid of?’

‘Smirk?’

‘Yeah. You smirked.’

‘Did I?’

‘Don’t fuck around, Billy. What are you not telling me?’

He allows that to hang for a while, then reaches for the makings. ‘Let me ask you this,’ he says as he builds a smoke. ‘What colour were Karlsson’s eyes?’

‘Blue.’

‘How many eyes did he have?’

‘Two.’

‘What colour was his hair?’

‘Blond.’

‘Karlsson,’ he says in a chiding tone, ‘had two eyes, both of them brown. His hair was brown too, going a little foxy in the sideburns.’

‘Who gives a fuck,’ I say, ‘if his hair was pink? We’re not writing about Karlsson anymore, we’re writing about you.’

‘Since when?’ he says.

‘Since always. Since you first showed up.’

‘With blond hair,’ he insists, ‘and one blue eye.’ He dips the shades to remind me of the sucked-out prune that used to be his other eye. ‘You’ve never wondered about what happened?’

‘I asked about it, Billy. As I recall, you said I wouldn’t believe you if you told me.’

‘And you just let it lie. For a writer,’ he says, ‘you’re not very curious, are you?’

‘We’d never met before. It would’ve been rude to push it.’

‘And now?’

I shrug. ‘If you want to tell me, just tell me.’

He plays with the cigarette, rolling it between the ball of his thumb and the tips of his fingers. ‘You’re just not getting it,’ he says, ‘are you?’

‘I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, Billy. If you want to tell me how you lost your eye, then go for it. If not, let’s cut the bullshit and just do this.’

‘I didn’t just lose my eye,’ he says. ‘An eye isn’t something that rolls out of its socket some night you’re on the rip. You don’t put your eye down somewhere for a minute, then forget where you––’

‘Yeah, yeah, I get it. So just tell me.’

‘You’re some fucking plank,’ he says, shaking his head. He stares at me for a long moment, then seems to make a decision. He sparks the smoke, exhales from the corner of his mouth, his eye on mine all the while. ‘What happened my eye,’ he says, ‘is totally irrelevant. What matters is, Karlsson had two eyes and I only have one. What matters,’ he says, ‘is somewhere between you writing Karlsson and me turning up, an eye was lost.’

‘Ah. Okay.’

‘You see it?’

‘I think so, yeah.’ I’d been wondering when Billy would make his power-play. ‘You’re saying something happened your eye, it doesn’t really matter what or how. The point being, it wasn’t me who made it happen.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So who did?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Well,’ I say, ‘there’s really only two options, both of them totally absurd.’

‘And they are?’

‘Well, either someone other than you or me got their hands on the manuscript and rewrote Karlsson, before you showed up here, or you somehow managed to rewrite yourself.’

‘There’s another option,’ he says.

‘Which is?’

‘I’m the writer. I’m the one writing you.’

And there it is, Billy’s attempt to claim more authority, so that it’s he and not I who decides his ultimate fate.

‘You’re saying,’ I say, ‘that you’re the one who’s really in charge.’

‘I’m saying it’s a possibility. If it wasn’t, it shouldn’t even occur to me, should it? Even as a possibility.’

‘Okay. But what if I’m writing you that way,’ I say, ‘so that you get to believe you’re in control?’

He pats his pockets, then glances around, peering out at the lawn beyond the decking rails. ‘I don’t suppose you saw my straws?’ he says.

‘Straws?’

‘I hate to see a man with nothing left to clutch at.’

As always, his chutzpah borders on genius. ‘You’re a fucking loon,’ I say. ‘You know that?’

‘Maybe I am.’ He smirks again. ‘But then, most writers are.’

‘True enough,’ I say. ‘But at least we’re not poets, eh?’

Oh, how we laugh.

 

 

Later that evening, Debs comes over with some takeaway Indian, Inception on DVD.

‘So what’s new with Billy the Kidder?’ she says, popping home a shrimp.

I tell her that Billy reckons he’s the one writing us. ‘Or writing me, at least.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yep.’

She chuckles at that, then says, ‘You know, that mightn’t be such a bad thing. If Billy thinks he has free will, then all you need to do is channel him in the right direction, so that when the hospital blows up he’ll believe that he was the one who decided he should go up with it.’

‘You think he’ll buy that?’

‘Maybe. A captain’s sinking ship and all that,’ she says. ‘Besides, the last thing you want is to end up writing a series about this guy.’

‘True. Except I’m wondering if he’s not angling for more credit.’

‘How come?’

‘Well, if he stands up on stage and does an adaptation of my story, he pays for the rights. If he gets a co-writing credit, he pays less. If he gets to stand up and say it’s an original piece, loosely based on something I’ve written . . .’

‘Cheeky bastard.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You can’t let him get away with that.’

‘No, but the more work he does, the less I have to do. And I get to walk out of here with Crime Always Pays redrafted and a cheque on the way if Billy ever gets his gig off the ground. He reckons the Arts Council are interested in backing him with some commissioning funding.’

‘So let him do it. You have the original manuscript, right? If there’s any dispute, that’s your trump card.’

‘And Jonathan says he’ll back me up, no problem.’

‘So that’s alright, then.’

‘Hopefully, yeah. Billy’s a sneaky fucker.’

‘And you’re not?’

I get the DVD playing, and we snuggle up on the couch eating off one another’s plates. ‘Is it just me,’ Deborah says, ‘or should Leo DiCaprio just point-blank refuse any script that requires him to run?’

We decide that, in the sprinting thespian stakes, no one holds a candle to Tom Cruise.

Leo is descending into his third or fourth version of reality when Debs’s mobile starts to vibrate.

‘Hello?’ she says. ‘Oh hi, Kathleen. Is everything . . . ?

‘Oh. Right.

‘No, I know. You were right to ring, absolutely . . . What’s that?

‘Yeah, I’ve booked her for an appointment on Thursday morning. It is worrying, yes . . .

‘Okay, I’m on my way. See you soon.’ She hangs up.

‘What’s wrong?’ I say.

‘Rosie’s wheezing again,’ she says, brushing poppadom crumbs off her lap.

‘Shit. Since when?’

‘This morning. I mean, it’s on and off, and mostly when she’s feeding. It’s like she can feed or breathe, not both at the same time.’

‘Fuck.’

‘I know. Listen, she’s due for her jabs on Thursday morning. Can you make it? We can have a good chat with the doctor.’

‘Of course, yeah.’

‘It’d be good if you could. It’s like five injections in one go. She’ll be a mess after.’

‘I’ll be there. Want me to come with you now?’

‘No, there’s no need. I’ll ring later and let you know how she is. But she’ll be fine, she always is.’

‘You’re sure.’

‘I’m sure.’ A wan smile. ‘Well, sure as I can be. Who the hell knows anything when it comes to babies?’

That night I dream about Billy rewriting the script for Inception, except I’m Leo DiCaprio, descending through the various levels of hell, in desperate pursuit of Rosie as she flits fairy-like from one demon-filled cavern to the next, the sound of her wheezing drawing me on and ever downwards, a spiral of despair that grows more desolate and lonely the more the caverns narrow. Just like that I find myself in a tiny grotto, dimly lit. A woman dressed in blue silk stands with one hand pressed to her heart, the other held up, palm facing me.

It is She.

The Muse, who guides us through Purgatorio to Paradiso, where the pagan Virgil could not go.

‘Beatrice,’ I say.

From beneath her skirts a faint rustling. A wheezing.

‘I am not your illusion,’ Beatrice says. ‘You have not paid the price. Go home,’ she says, with an inflection that makes it both benediction and curse.

‘Not without Rosie,’ I say.

‘Too late,’ she says, and leans back on the altar, her skirts drawn back, so that I can see Rosie crawling up inside her, an upside-down Rosie gone bluey-black for the want of oxygen, her head falling back and her eyes glazed, the wheezing a roar now filling the cavern, a whirlwind reaping.

‘No,’ I say. But neither Rosie nor Beatrice are listening.

 

•

 

Today is cold and dry. I slip into the supply room on the fifth floor and steal a syringe. I fill said syringe from a bottle of paint-thinner.

I find my supervisor’s car. From a discreet distance I spray the bonnet with paint-thinner. Pin-pricks appear on the paintwork.

I am wondering what I have to do to get through to my supervisor. I am wondering what it will take to persuade him to leave his car at home.

I am Sir Lancelot of Ye Ozone Layere, waging a just war on behalf of the environment.

Twice now in the planet’s recent history a meteor large enough to cause significant damage has collided with the earth. When a big rock hits, the impact sets off a violent chain reaction. Volcanoes erupt and keep on spewing. Earthquakes split continents. Tectonic plates bump and grind. A cloud of dust blots out the sun. A nuclear winter sets in that can last for millennia.

The most recent major meteor strike did for 65 percent of all living material, including the dinosaurs. Were it not for these events, Homo sapien would not be the dominant species on the planet. Were it not for these events, mammals would not have adapted to their environment in a particular way. Were it not for the carbon assassins from outer space, Christ, Darwin and Hitler would not have been born.

Who will protest the next meteor? Who will wave placards and demand that the meteors be returned, in lead-lined containers, from whence they came? Who will don white boiler suits and journey alongside the next meteor as it plunges through the vacuum towards our puny pebble?

My line for today is, Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. (Henry David Thoreau)

 

 

Suffering is part of the natural order. Pain is as essential as birth and decay. In scientific tests, radishes were proven to scream when ripped from the earth. Can other radishes hear these screams? Who cares for the agony of radishes?

The idea of stealing drugs came to me when an old lady asked one night if I had anything on the cart that might dull the pain that had her doubled up and speaking so quietly I could barely hear her words.

‘No ma’am,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

But it set me thinking. There was a certain symmetrical nobility in the idea of pilfering drugs to help those who need them most, like a Japanese orderly breaking into Red Cross packages to help British POWs. But that would have been a crassly stupid thing to do. Certainly I will plead with a nurse on behalf of a patient who appears to be in pain. I am not an animal, except in the literal sense. But even animals know not to defecate on their own doorstep.

Still, the majority of people who are in pain are not in hospital. Agony cannot always be X-rayed. Anguish cannot always be pumped out. A broken heart cannot be splinted. These people would rather not pay a general practitioner’s fee in order to obtain a simple prescription to cure an ailment they can diagnose themselves. This is where I, yours truly, Karlsson, come in.

The joy of theft is the lack of overheads. I skim from a different hospital storage facility on alternate floors every month. In this way I don’t allow a pattern to build up. This is not difficult to achieve. There is no set schedule to subvert. If the opportunity presents itself – if the nurses’ station is deserted, say, and I have the means to transport the contraband undetected, and I have not targeted that particular facility for some months – I will avail of the opportunity.

Furthermore, I do not skim the same merchandise every time. The range is wide enough to qualify as eclectic. Uppers and downers, anything morphine-based, the deliciously bewildering pick-‘n’-mix of anti-depressants: the Tricyclics (Elavil, Tofranil, Pamelor), the SSRIs (Prozac, Sarafem, Zoloft, Paxil), the MAOIs (Nardil, Parnate), and the atypicals (Desyrel, Zyban, Serzone, Wellbutrin).

These I offload at a competitive rate to P—, my connection in town. P— used to deal weed and E to students until he realised the potential of black market script drugs. Soon he will graduate to heroin. Eventually he will become a TV salesman.

I call P—.

‘My mother-in-law is out of town,’ I say. This is his idea of code. P— is a paranoid who watches too many gritty American cop shows. He has The Wire running on a perpetual loop. His mood-swings give him emotional whiplash.

He says, ‘Usual place, ten bells.’

He hangs up. I ring back.

‘Remind me,’ I say. ‘Where’s the usual place?’

‘The usual, for fuck’s sakes.’

‘I go to a lot of places that are usual.’

‘Strandhill,’ he says. ‘Strandfuckinghill.’

This is code for Rosses Point, the swanky resort across the bay from Strandhill. I like the idea of dealing illicit contraband at the Point. ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘See you around ten.’

‘At ten.’ He grinds his teeth. ‘Ten on the fucking dot.’

He even sounds like he’s sweating. So I turn up at twenty-past, just to be cuntish. When I get in his car he seems hypnotised by the flicker of the lighthouse beam. His complexion is pasty.

‘You alright, man?’ I say. ‘You don’t look so good.’

But he’s not listening. ‘Gimme the shit,’ he says.

I hand it over. He gives me the money. He starts babbling about an upcoming skiing holiday in Bulgaria, then confuses it with a skiing holiday he took a few years ago, in the Italian Alps. I cut in, make my excuses.

P— drives for home, seemingly unaware that two distinct arcs in time have just intersected. I smoke a cigarette before I follow him back into town. The last place I want to be is behind a driver unaware that he is trapped at a tangent point between then and when.

 

 

Today I wheel a six-year-old girl down to the ultrasound department. She is rigid with false courage and understandably fearful. The doctors suspect she has a hole in her heart. This child has learned too soon that the bogeyman is not the real threat. This child has learned too soon that the enemy is always within.

While I wait outside the ultrasound suite I consider that the Spartans threw defective babies off a great height into a rocky gorge. The act was ceremonial. The message was clear. Infirmity would not be tolerated. The gene pool would not be tainted.

There was a time when the Spartans epitomised ruthlessness. One apocryphal tale has a Spartan warrior complaining that his sword is too short. His mother retorts that he might want to think about taking a step closer to his enemy.

Today the Spartan legacy is adjectival shorthand for ‘bleakly minimalist’. The philosophy of the ultimate warrior race, which introduced the concept of utopia through cleaving to the imperatives of natural selection, has been reduced to an adjective most closely associated with Swedish interior design.

This is unfortunate. The Spartans have many things to teach us, if only we are prepared to listen. Today ruthlessness is regarded as anti-social. We cherish the weak, afford the vulnerable a protected position in society, and celebrate their difference.

The irony of my own situation has not escaped me. If I had been born Spartan, my puny frame would have disappeared over the cliff into that rocky gorge. But I am willing to consider the possibility that the world might be a better place had I not lived. Most people are not prepared to consider this possibility.

Most people assume that civilisation is, de facto, A Good Idea. People unthinkingly accept that the mark of a civilised society is a desire to protect the weak, the young, the old and the vulnerable. The right of the infirm to procreate is enshrined in law. Today the blind are encouraged to lead. Today we describe the Spartans’ defectives with the more gentle term ‘challenged’. The dictionary defines ‘challenge’ as: ‘A summons or defiance to fight a duel; an invitation to a contest of any kind; a calling into question’.

The Spartans practiced rudimentary eugenics. The Spartans bred for strength, courage, endurance and purity. Today this is regarded as a crime against humanity, although the racehorses seem to be making out okay. The adjective ‘thoroughbred’ is a positive one. The art of achieving it, however, is restricted to the animal kingdom.

This is an intriguing anomaly. We do not preach what we practice. We do not cull non-contributors. We do not let the weak fall prey. We do not castrate the mentally infirm. We do not let the aged die. In time, this is will result in a shrinking core of healthy human beings, bounded on one side by ever-weakening youth, and on the other by indefinitely extended old age. The doctors and scientists are composing a suicide note to inform an indifferent universe that a species died out through caring too much. Compassion is without doubt A Good Thing, but too much of A Good Thing is not a good thing. A surfeit of compassion becomes a disease. Hospitals become tumours.

In time, wayward meteors may come to be regarded as aggressive chemotherapy. For now we need to think outside the box. We have to target the tumours individually. We need to engage in keyhole surgery. We need to use the system against itself before the system turns on us.

Thus, this: hospitals must become abattoirs.

This is repulsive. Logic often is. Logic doesn’t have to live in the real world. Logic is too busy planning its escape route. Logic has its hands full building fallout shelters and launch-pads. Logic does not admit sentiment. Logic slices through tradition, perceived wisdom, learned responses and self-serving cant. Logic is Occam’s Razor: Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.

Despite its best efforts, the Spartan Empire lasted only two hundred years (560 to 371 BCE). Its practical pursuit of physical integrity was insufficient to sustain its philosophy, which in turn was not fluid enough to adapt. The Spartans rejected notions of progress and change. The Spartans thought that A Good Idea is a good idea forever.

History teaches that this is untrue. History records that the Spartans were ruthless and cruel, and that the Spartans died out. Ergo, history suggests that compassion is the way to go.

A question from the back of the class: were the Spartans too ruthless or were the Spartans not ruthless enough?

On the way back to the ward, the six-year-old asks me if they found a hole in her heart.

‘No,’ I say. This may or may not be a lie. The results of the ultrasound will not be available for some hours. ‘They didn’t find anything that shouldn’t be there. Your heart is perfect.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. The only thing they discovered was that there’s more love in there than you actually think you have. They think most of it is for your parents.’

‘But why did they think I had a hole?’

‘The machine must have been faulty,’ I say. ‘The first machine that took the ultrasound must have had a hole in its heart.’

‘Oh.’

‘Anyway, it wouldn’t be a disaster if you did have a hole in your heart. Look at me.’

She cannot do this, as I am behind her, pushing her wheelchair. ‘Why?’ she says. ‘Do you have a hole in your heart?’

‘Sure. My heart is practically all hole.’

This is a truth no machine could prove, but the six-year-old seems happy.

My line for today comes courtesy of William of Ockham: Plurality should not be posited without necessity.

 

•

 

‘We’re back to the Nazis again,’ Billy says. ‘Eugenics and killing off simpletons – it’s just not kosher, man.’

‘What can I tell you? Karlsson was a big fan of the Spartans.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe that was A Good Idea for the first draft,’ he says. He uses his forefingers to make invisible inverted commas in the air when he says A Good Idea. ‘But it’s outlived its usefulness.’

‘Y’know, I think that was Karlsson’s whole point.’

‘So why bother making it?’

‘You’re the boss,’ I say.

 

•

 

Always assume everyone is an idiot. This saves time.

My supervisor calls me to his office. He sits on the windowsill, one foot touching the floor, the other resting on the low radiator beneath the window. This is the window that looks out on the car park surrounded by manicured shrubs.

He waves me to the chair in front of his desk. I sit, straight-backed. He is wearing orthopaedic shoes, black with thick rubber soles, and socks with an Argyll pattern, pale blue bisected with yellow diagonals. His posture is one of exaggerated relaxation. His sitting on the windowsill is designed to create an informal atmosphere. We are no longer supervisor-supervisee. We are mano-a-mano.

‘Karlsson, I’ve been thinking about that last written warning. Maybe I was a bit hasty.’

I close my eyes. I riffle through the file stamped ‘Appropriate Responses’. I select ‘Humbled but Grateful’.

‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘You were only doing your job. I needed to pull my socks up.’

He is pleasantly surprised. He straightens, places both feet on the floor and leans forward with his hands on his thighs. He rubs his palms on his trousers. Dark patches appear on the coarse grey material.

‘Maybe so,’ he says, ‘but I think I can meet you halfway on this one. Your performance since then suggests you’ve learned your lesson.’

He is in tolerant mode. Magnanimous. He has suggested compromise as an adult response to a childish situation. ‘I think I can have that written warning rescinded,’ he says. ‘If your work continues to demonstrate diligence, I may even be in a position to propose a commendation.’

He smiles. He stands up and extends his hand across the desk. ‘Karlsson, I hope we can come to some kind of an understanding.’

I shrug. ‘Everyone deserves a second chance,’ I say.

We shake. His grip is limp and damp.

‘Y’know, Mike,’ I say, ‘about that commendation. If you could swing it, I’d much rather a recommendation for a raise. It’s been nearly a year now since the last time, and Cassie and me are thinking of, y’know . . .’

I tail off and allow the words to fall to the floor, there to prostrate themselves in my stead. He waves his hand, palm up, like a fat pink windscreen wiper. ‘Leave it with me,’ he says. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I’d appreciate that, Mike. Really, I would.’

‘Say no more.’

‘No more.’

He blinks, then gets it and grins. I make for the door. When I look back he seems to have lost about fifty pounds in weight, most of it around the shoulders. He is still smiling. He waves again.

In his relief he has forgotten I know that all HSE salaries are capped, determined in negotiation between government and unions. In his joy he has forgotten that his position is that of a circus ringmaster: all top hat, tails, glitter and sawdust. I imagine chimps unlocking cages. I see tigers prowling the bleachers. I hear the trumpeting of maddened elephants. I hear the twang of guy-ropes snapping and see the great canvas cathedral totter and begin to topple.

I wave back, sheepishly, and close his door behind me.

My line for today is, He was reminded of flies wrenching their legs off in the struggle to free themselves from fly-paper. (Franz Kafka, The Trial)

 

 

The perfect murder requires one essential element: a victim no one cares about. A homeless wino, say.

You buy a cup of take-out coffee. You walk the streets until you encounter a social reject huddled in an alleyway swaddled in old newspapers. You approach this non-contributor and offer him the coffee. When he bends his head to take a drink, you strike the base of his skull with a lump hammer.

On the way home, you drop the hammer in a wheelie bin awaiting pick-up. Et voila, etc.

 

•

 

‘Woah,’ Billy says. ‘A lump hammer?’

‘Apparently so.’

‘So no Angel of Mercy,’ he says. ‘That makes it Hyde and Hyde.’

‘I don’t think we’re saying you actually lump-hammered the wino,’ I say. ‘I think it’s just that you’re positing a theory.’

‘I don’t like it,’ he says. ‘Again, you go down that route, you’re into Highsmith territory. And no offence, but . . .’

‘None taken. I vote we scrap it.’

‘You’re the boss,’ he says, toasting me with his coffee mug.

 

•

 

Sermo Vulgus: A Novel (Excerpt)

 

Cassie, vague stories percolate down through the millennia. The names of Cheops, Minos, Hammurabi. In 4,000 years’ time, history may or may not vaguely remember Jesus, Darwin and Hitler.

There are mountain ranges newer than evil, Cassie. All we have going for us is that we can cry and laugh about it all over again; but only when we can only laugh can we say we have truly evolved.

Cassie, the shark has been around for 400 million years. The shark has survived four mass extinctions that claimed at least 80 percent of the planet’s life forms. The shark is virtually impervious to infections, cancers and circulatory diseases. They heal rapidly from debilitating injuries and hunt even as they heal. There are continents newer than sharks. Some sharks practice a form of intrauterine cannibalism.

Top that, Spartans.

Cassie, my love, Hitler and Stalin will come again. Hitler will preach Darwin and the Fourth Reich will outlive the sharks.

Cassie, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.

 

•

 

‘Remind me,’ he says. ‘Did we say we were dumping the Cassie novel or not?’

‘I think you said you didn’t like it as a novel, but you wanted to use the material another way.’

‘Hmmmm,’ he says. He gnaws a chunk from his brioche. ‘Is it working for you? As novel extracts, I mean.’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes, yeah. Although generally speaking, that kind of interruption does my head in. John Gardner – you know him? He had Ray Carver for one of his pupils, so he obviously knew his shit.’

‘Carver, yeah. He’s a good one.’

‘Gardner reckoned the novel should be a vivid, continuous dream. So maybe we should think about pulling the Cassie novel entirely.’

‘Seems a waste,’ he says.

‘Only if we dump it. But we could always recycle.’

‘Fitting it in somewhere else?’

‘No. As a whole new novel. The follow-up.’

One eyebrow arches. ‘You think?’

‘Why not? If this one’s a hit, they’ll be asking for anything else we’ve got.’

‘You think it’ll be a hit?’

‘Probably not, but who knows? Anyway, there’s no harm in having something ready to go.’

‘True for you,’ he says.

 

•

 

Today is another Red Letter day. Today I am given A Special Mission. Today I am requested to remove all flowers from wards, private rooms and corridors, and anywhere else where said blooms might prove fatal to patients.

‘How come?’ I say. ‘What’s wrong with flowers?’

‘They take up too much space,’ the matron says. ‘And they’re always being knocked over. The nurses spend too much time cleaning up broken vases, time that could be spent in more valuable nurse-patient frontline interaction.’

This is logical. This represents the intelligent deployment of limited resources. This is being cruel to be kind.

This is a Big Fat Lie.

‘But they’re mine,’ the first woman says.

‘My husband bought me those,’ the second woman says.

‘Things are grim enough in here at it is,’ the third woman says, ‘without you taking away the little colour we have.’

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘but orders are orders.’

‘What’s wrong with the flowers?’ the second woman wants to know.

I tell them that the flowers keep falling over and that a nurse’s time is too valuable these days to be wasted cleaning up the mess.

‘None of our flowers have ever fallen over,’ the first woman says.

‘What’s the real reason?’ the third woman says.

‘Do you really want to know?’ I say.

‘I think we have a right to know. They’re our flowers.’

So I tell them that there is increasing evidence that some strains of bacteria can grow in stagnant water, that spilt water increases the risk of spreading infection in busy wards, and that the hospital is doing its best to minimise said risk.

‘Rubbish,’ the first woman says.

‘More EU shite,’ the third woman says.

‘It’s your own fault,’ I say.

‘Our fault?’ the second woman says. She is outraged, or as outraged as any heavily pregnant woman can allow herself to become. ‘How dare you?’

‘Why would it be our fault?’ the first woman says quietly.

‘Given your age,’ I say, ‘and taking into account the average human being’s medical experience, you’ve probably consumed, at minimum, three different types of antibiotic to date. Most people take an antibiotic at least once every four years.’

‘What has that to do with the flowers?’ the third woman says.

‘Back in the day,’ I say, ‘before they discovered antibiotics, hospitals had to be scrupulously clean. In theory, anyway. If you got an infection back then it was lights out. Nothing to be done. Then they invented penicillin. Which was great, but now everyone’s pretty much immune to antibiotics because they’re taken for everything. Colds, flu, cold sores – they’re going down like Smarties. Who got the orchids?’

‘Me,’ the second woman says. She is sullen but subdued.

‘Orchids are good as hospital flowers,’ I say. ‘They’re tough, resistant to disease.’

‘Why would that matter?’ the first woman says. ‘Surely they’re already dead before they come into the hospital.’

‘Fair point. Anyway, your problem is the hospital itself. I mean the building, not the way it’s run.’

‘The building?’

‘It’s a little known fact that hospitals suffer from Sick Building Syndrome. It’s a thing that happens in an environment where air quality is diminished due to the growth of bacteria and fungi microbes. They form in an invisible mould, especially in buildings that are well insulated and don’t have what they call a lot of air exchange. The problem gets worse when you have air conditioning and central heating, which are an integral part of hospitals, because these spread the microbes all over the place and you get cross-infections and suchlike.’

‘How come no one ever told us that?’ the third woman says. The second woman is now pale, her unsightly ruddy complexion a thing of the past. I expect no thanks for this.

‘Because going public with it would mean replacing all the hospitals every ten years or so. The country would go bankrupt just building new hospitals. Or it would,’ I say, ‘if it wasn’t already bankrupt. Anyone said anything to you about superbugs?’

All three nod. There is much thinning of lips. Microbes have become the teensy-weensy elephants in the corner.

‘The one to watch,’ I say, ‘is the MRSA. MRSAs account for over 40 percent of all superbugs in hospitals. The medical name is Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. It’s highly infectious and almost impossible to diagnose.’ The second woman stares while scratching absent-mindedly at her forearm. ‘It causes fever and inflammation as well as wound and skin infections. It also causes urinary tract infections, pneumonia and bacteraemia. In English, that’s blood poisoning.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ the first woman breathes.

‘The good news is that you’re pregnant,’ I say. ‘The bacterium lives harmlessly on the skin or in the nose and it’s no threat to a healthy person. And you all look healthy to me. But anyone who has extensive surgery, or whose immune system is weakened, they’re what they call vulnerable. So don’t go hoping to get off light with a C-section.’

‘Why don’t they just invent new antibiotics?’ the third woman says.

‘They’re trying, sure, but it’s not happening. Just last month, you might have heard about it, there was an outbreak of KPC in Limerick. Don’t ask me the Latin, but it’s bad juju. If I was you, I’d have my baby and make your man get a vasectomy. But that’s just me. Anyone mind if I take away all the flowers?’

No one minds. I say, ‘The whole superbug thing, I wouldn’t take it personally. It’s just Mother Nature having a word in our ear about over-population. I mean, if you want to hack a species down to size, it makes sense to target the weak and old, don’t you think?’

But they’re not listening. Maybe it’s Tuesday. Or maybe they’re too busy dialling their mobile phones and instructing their husbands to investigate the possibility of home birth.

I trawl the hospital with a wheelie bin, reflecting on the number of ways there are to die while in hospital. Apart from superbugs and the natural degeneration of old age, there is the occasional wayward scalpel, the over-enthusiastic application of anaesthetic, the rare but very real danger of an Angel of Death, food poisoning, misdiagnosis, car accidents at the hospital gate.

Not all of these potential killers can be attributed to the fact that accountants now run hospitals on behalf of politicians. Happily, accountants are in the perfect position to advise that we cannot afford a report investigating the extent to which accountants have become our Angels of Mercy.

 

•

 

‘You forgot to put in about the hospital exploding,’ he says.

I make a note. ‘That reminds me,’ I say. ‘How’re you planning to blow up a whole hospital?’

He taps his nose. ‘Loose lips sink ships,’ he says.

‘Just tell me you’re being serious about it,’ I say, ‘that you have an actual plan. Don’t have me rewriting all this just to find out you’re thinking of having a prototype missile wobble off course or some deus ex machina bullshit like that.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘It’s all under control.’

 

•

 

Consider Cain, people. Cain was playing a game that God invented without passing on the rules. All that mattered back then was apples. Cain made sure he didn’t touch any apples and God hadn’t said anything about not smiting your brother.

Consider Judas. Judas was obeying orders. Judas was fulfilling the scriptures. Judas was the pawn that sacrificed itself. Who today has the courage of Iscariot, to endure eternal vilification for facilitating his master’s desire for suicidal martyrdom?

Consider Pilate. Pilate did his best. Pilate appealed to logic and reason but the patience required to deflect the willing martyr is unquantifiable. Pilate was caught in a pincer movement between the immovable object and the irresistible force. The sound of the universe is the sound of Pilate’s sigh.

Consider Cain, Judas and Pilate and judge not, lest ye be judged. Or judge away to your heart’s content. It’s a pointless exercise in self-aggrandising hubris anyway.

I, yours truly, Karlsson, align myself with Cain, Judas and Pilate. I embrace the how-it-is. I spit in the face of how-it-should-be. Cain, Judas and Pilate are among the few truly free men of history. It took the combined weight of your retrospective vilification and disgust to set them free.

Now they stand outside the narrative of history, banished from the party that celebrates not just the rules but the fact that there are rules. But their noses are not pressed up against the drawing-room windows. They are not envious. Cain, Judas and Pilate are down at the bottom of the garden in the shadows beneath a spreading oak, smoking a sneaky joint and entertaining themselves by composing haikus that seek to understand your need to belong.

My line for today: Most people are not looking for freedom at all, but for a cause to enslave themselves to. (Max Stirner, aka Johann Kaspar Schmidt)

 

 

I am no Luddite. Technology is not evil per se. A sword, a nuclear weapon, the internet – these are inert tools that may or may not be deployed by those with intentions that may or may not be retrospectively described as evil. A ploughshare beaten from a sword will be regarded as a weapon of mass destruction by the woodland creatures whose habitat was destroyed to prepare land for farming.

I prefer to surf the web aimlessly. I constantly avail of Google’s ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ option. There are always diamonds to be mined from the dross. Dross is defined by its propensity to yield precious material.

Tonight I stumble into a chat-room populated by young girls. These young girls are discussing the latest Katy Perry promo, which their parents will not allow them view on TV but which they have downloaded from the web on their mobile phones. I log on, join in. I tell them my name is Jennifer, that I am eleven years old, live in Dublin, and that I have not yet seen the promo under discussion. I expect to be ridiculed. Children are animals, fiercely self-defining in their shared imperatives as they struggle to survive and thrive. But I am pleasantly surprised. Compassion is alive and well and available at a young girls’ chat-room near you.

The conversation topic evolves. One girl, Tara, complains that her mother found her underwear in her bag when she was picked up from a supervised school disco. Mass commiseration ensues. Advice is offered. I confess that my mother does not allow me to attend such events. Commiseration threatens to melt down the server.

It grows late. One by one the girls retire to bed. We reprise the ending of every episode of The Waltons. Soon I am conversing alone with Tara, lol-ing IN CAPS when we recall our unsophisticated adoration of Justin Bieber. We arrange to meet again soon, metaphorically speaking, in the chat-room. We say our goodbyes.

Tonight I reflect that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet were thirteen and twelve, respectively. Tonight I reflect on how Shakespeare would have had no concept of the media through which his dramas would be performed in the future. Tonight the internet; tomorrow, perhaps, the tale will be beamed directly into my brain, and my subconscious will select the most suitable variations of my own personality to populate the cast.

My line for tonight is, This love I feel, that feel no love in this/ Dost thou laugh? (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

 

•

 

‘I hope you’re wiping your surfing record,’ I say. ‘Deleting your cookies.’

He glances up from his notebook, wary, trying to judge if I’m taking the piss. ‘I’m making it all up, man,’ he says.

‘Of course you are.’

‘Karlsson was a pervert,’ he says, ‘all that hinky shit he had going on with Cassie. But that’s not me.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

‘You and Cassie both.’

 

•

 

The old man disappears. He is traceless. His bed has been filled.

I wonder if beds have memories, if they retain the distinctive curvature of a particular spine. I wonder if beds mourn the passing of peaceful sleepers.

I ask around the ward. No one seems to know where the old man has gone. Most are unaware a new patient has arrived. This may or may not be a deliberate ploy formulated by their collective unconscious. The eye is the most selective of the body’s organs. Memory is a Swiss cheese.

There are options. The old man might have been moved to a different ward. He may have been released. He may have died. He may even be in purgatory, aka the hospice.

I wheel my cart to the nurses’ station. The nurse behind the counter is mid-twenties and meticulously blonde.

The front-line nursing service in Ireland is second to none. This particular nurse is a notable exception to this rule. Perhaps she is conducting a one-woman wildcat strike against Ireland’s penchant for rewarding essential excellence with penury.

‘What happened to the old mechanic?’ I say.

She stares. ‘Mechanic?’

‘The amputee. Long John Silver. The gangrene guy.’

‘Oh, him.’ She flicks through a sheaf of forms attached to an aluminium clipboard. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Call me sentimental.’

‘But you’re not entitled to that information.’

‘I know I’m not entitled,’ I say. ‘But be a princess. Where’s the harm in a little extra-curricular compassion?’

‘It could get me in trouble,’ she says, ‘is where the harm is.’

This is not true. We both know this. But she’s looking for quid pro quo, so I play along.

‘Don’t worry,’ I say, ‘I won’t tell anyone. How about a chocolate-chip muffin for your coffee break?’

I place said muffin on the counter. We have now entered the realms of a possible conflict of interest. I am attempting to bribe a public health representative with a chocolate-chip muffin, albeit in the pursuit of information I am entitled to know.

‘So what happened the old man?’ I say.

‘He signed himself out this morning.’

‘How was he when he left?’

‘I don’t know, I wasn’t on this morning.’

‘Don’t you care? I mean, you looked after that guy for three weeks. Didn’t it occur to you to ask how he was when he left?’

‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ she says, ‘we’re pretty busy around here.’

She says this standing behind a counter in a quiet corridor with one hand on her hip and the other hand reaching for a chocolate-chip muffin.

Self-awareness is not a natural instinct. It is a goal to be aimed for through constant re-evaluation. Perhaps she is too busy thinking she is busy to devote the required time.

Plato declared that the unexamined life is not worth living.

Plato lived to the age of eighty at a time when the average life expectancy was thirty.

Is it safe to assume that Plato never had to wipe excrement out of the crack of an old man’s arse?

I push the muffin across the counter. ‘Watch out for the chocolate chips,’ I say. ‘A woman down in pre-natal chipped a tooth last week.’

 

 

Tonight Cassie wants to go to the movies. The new George Clooney has finally arrived. Cassie likes George. She reckons she would happily marry anyone so long as she could amend her vows to, ‘’Til George do us part.’

Later, Cassie will close her eyes while she screws me, the better to pretend that I am George Clooney. This will be her thrill. My thrill will be screwing a woman who is screwing another man. All’s fair in love and warped intimacies, etc.

We buy our tickets. We buy popcorn. We find seats, hold hands. This is the unspoken deal we cut with all the other couples pretending to be normal couples.

George is hamming up his cheeky Aryan schtick. George has starred in some very good movies: O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Good Night, and Good Luck, Michael Clayton. I even like Ocean’s Eleven.

Cassie’s favourite is Out of Sight. It allows her to indulge every woman’s fantasy combo of damp gusset and irresponsible empowerment.

Up on the screen, Hitman George reveals his tender side to an Italian prostitute. This is Cassie’s time. Right now I am a distraction. I slip away to the bathroom.

The corridor is quiet. I pick another movie at random. I walk down the centre aisle and hunker down beneath the screen. There is no immediate reaction. There is no reason why there should be any reaction at all. I am not interfering with the audience’s field of vision. I make no sound. No one is discommoded by my presence. I simply hunker down and stare out at the sea of silvered, flickering faces staring up at the screen. But I am noticed.

Even above the din of the movie’s soundtrack I hear the squeaking of buttocks shifting on springy seats. Despite the clatter of attacking helicopters I can sense a wave of discontent washing down towards me. Mortars boom and grenades explode but I can still hear the audience shout vulgarities, expletives. Someone queries my sexual orientation.

A carton of popcorn arcs out of the silvery glare. I duck away. A cardboard beaker follows. Sticky liquid rains down. Someone cheers. It is a war cry, an ululation. Missiles rain down. We are remaking Zulu, with chocolate raisins for spears. Lemon Bon-Bons are so much shrapnel. The back rows are standing up, the better to take aim. The soundtrack of helicopters, tanks and ground-to-air missiles has been drowned out.

I am oddly moved by their passion. I am tempted to conduct an impromptu vox-pop enquiring as to how many of these Bon-Bon warriors voted in the last election.

But my knees are aching. I rise from my hunkers and stroll up the centre aisle. People sit down as I pass. They grumble, sneer and cast aspersions on my parentage, although no one confronts me directly.

The uproar has attracted attention. Outside, an usher jogs up the corridor towards me. His maroon velvet waistcoat is so ill-fitting it bounces on his shoulders. I jerk a thumb over my shoulder. ‘You’d want to get in there, man. Some asshole is blocking the screen.’

‘Cheers,’ he says.

I slip back into the George Clooney movie, find my seat and sit down. Cassie does not look across as she whispers, ‘Everything okay?’

She is still immersed in George. The words are rote. Nonetheless, their distracted familiarity conveys the vague, tremulous yearning that has shaped history since the dawn of mankind as the engine of every trade, war, religion, voyage and sexual encounter: the desire to believe that everything is okay, and that everything will be okay.

My line for tonight is: Love is this nagging preoccupation, this feeling that the treasure of life has condensed itself into the little space where she is. (William Golding, Envoy Extraordinary)

 

 

Tonight, on the night of our eight-month anniversary, I am disappointed to discover that Cassie has never heard of Antony and the Johnsons. Cassie has led a sheltered life, culturally speaking. She takes people at their word and judges books by their covers. She does not read between the lines.

These are only some of the reasons Cassie and I are celebrating our eight-month anniversary.

‘You’ve never heard of Antony?’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Only the greatest singing voice on the planet.’

Cass listens to pop radio. She watches Pop Idol, albeit for the personalities. Every Saturday morning she irons for two hours to the soundtrack of the latest download charts on TV, then bops along for half-an-hour to the Dance Fit Wii.

She will never hear Antony and the Johnsons in this way.

‘Let’s go,’ I say.

‘Where to?’

‘Just let’s go.’

We drive north out of town to Lissadell. We trespass on the country estate that was once a temporary home to W. B. Yeats, poet, statesman, Nobel Prize winner. In a civilised nation, this estate would be a public park celebrating genius, and we pilgrims. But we are in Ireland, courting prosecution.

We drive through a wood of deciduous trees that slopes down to the shore of a wide, shallow bay. We find a grassy area that allows for a view of Knocknerea across the bay. The moon is full and bright but the inky darkness of the bay is indistinguishable from the foot of the mountain on the far shore. For perspective we have to rely on the rippling of the moon-silvered water.

I park the car on the edge of a low bluff, angling its nose towards Knocknerea and its nippled grave of Queen Medbh. We step down off the grass into a shallow dune, spread a blanket. I roll a joint lightly laced with the last of Tommo’s Thai and give it to Cass. Then I go back to the car and slip some Antony and the Johnsons CDs into the stereo.

Cass sits cross-legged, staring out across the bay. The moon is so roundly full it appears to be the light at the end of the tunnel. ‘We should come here more often,’ she murmurs as I slip in behind her.

‘Ssshhh,’ I say, pressing play on the remote control. ‘Hope There’s Someone’ washes down across us as if from some Olympian height, wave upon wave until we are fully immersed. It is possible to imagine that we are at the centre of a universe composed entirely of sound.

Sitting behind Cass allows me to reach the back of her neck, which she loves to have stroked, fingertips running against the grain of downy hairs. Soon she is shivering. A tiny squeal as she wriggles away, one final shudder rebelling against the delicious decadence of the flesh.

I roll another jay. Primitive man ate magic mushrooms and danced beneath the moon until the visions made themselves manifest.

‘Bird Gerhl’, the final track, tapers off into silence. Cassie opens her eyes and allows her head to roll in my direction. Her eyes sparkle.

‘So what d’you think?’ I say.

‘I don’t know. I’d need to hear it again.’

‘Okay. But check this out first.’

Back we go, to Antony’s eponymous first offering. ‘Twilight’ gives way to ‘Cripple and the Starfish’, then ‘Hitler in my Heart’. The album draws heavily on orchestral influences, deploying piano, strings and brass. ‘River of Sorrow’ opens with a mournful fall. Cassie mock-swoons, rolls her head back, closes her eyes.

Later, as she dozes against the rise and fall of my chest, I stare up at the night sky. The moon is so roundly full and bright it seems to be the mouth of the universe shaped in a perfect ‘O’ of delight.

The cosmos has seen too much to be surprised by new lovers. Yet somehow it is always surprised by love.

My line for tonight comes courtesy of W. B. Yeats: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

•

 

‘That’s from a couple of weeks back,’ he says. ‘It might need some touching up.’

‘No, I like it.’ I like it so much it sets my wisdom teeth grinding. ‘You and Cassie, you seem to be getting on well these days.’

‘I’ve been making an effort,’ he concedes. ‘She’s asked for no sharks, less Spartans and three showers a week.’

‘They reckon the basis for a good relationship,’ I say, ‘is a man raising his expectations and a woman lowering hers.’

He shrugs. ‘I have her on a diet of Kurt Vonnegut, Joy Division and the Coen Brothers. We’ll see how it goes.’

 

•

 

Hitler was not evil. Stalin was not mad. We tell ourselves these lies for the same reason we tell children about the bogeyman: the truth is too terrifying to contemplate.

True, Hitler and Stalin were genocidal megalomaniacs. But they breathed oxygen. They ate and drank, pissed and shat. They laughed and cried. If the genetic code of the orang-utan differs from that of the human being by a mere 3 percent, how closely do other human beings resemble Hitler and Stalin?

Are the majority of people born immune to genocidal urgings? Are Hitler and Stalin to be pitied because they were born with an acquired immune deficiency syndrome in morality?

The winners write the history books. The losers wait impatiently for their opportunity to burn the winners’ books and start all over again.

So runs the perceived wisdom.

So struts the arrogance of winners.

Such is the ugly presumption of history.

Hear me now: the winners do not write the history books.

The writers write the history books.

 

 

My supervisor has found yet another parking space. This time he hides his car in a far corner on the second level of the cavernous underground car park, where an L-shaped recess obstructs the sight-lines of the casual viewer. But I am not a casual viewer. When I look, I see.

Of course, my supervisor has no way of knowing that I am drawn to such underground havens, the cellars and catacombs, like a perverse moth fleeing the flame.

Parking in this particular underground lot requires an official permit, which is allocated on a yearly basis. My supervisor must have pulled many strings to secure one. I am impressed by his resourcefulness, although I am less impressed with his unquestioning acceptance of how things appear.

It is true that the underground car park offers security against the smash-and-grab thief, but its Restricted Access status means that it does not provide comprehensive CCTV facilities. Cameras dot the walls at intervals but the security guard checks the surveillance monitors on an ad hoc basis.

I know this because the overworked security guard in question, Frankie, told me so while he purchased an eighth of hash last week.

I ring Frankie. I say, ‘Frankie, it’s K. How’re you fixed?’

‘Dry as a bone, man. There’s a drought on.’

‘I’ve an ounce Tommo dropped on me. Take it off my hands and I’ll unload it for an even ton.’

‘Done deal.’

‘Nice one. Meet me at three bells, fifth floor, the gents, second cubicle.’

I use these numbers to confuse him. When he rings later, wondering why I didn’t show, I will tell him I said three bells, second floor, fifth cubicle. Frankie will undoubtedly blame his poor short-term memory caused by smoking too much dope.

By then, of course, it will be too late. By then my supervisor will be driving a death trap.

According to the old man, the ex-mechanic, rats will chew on the brake-hose of cars in order to get at the sweet-tasting glycol in the brake-line fluid. They will not chew all the way through the hose, as this is not necessary to drain the fluid. This means that the brakes will function as normal, providing the car does not attempt any extraordinary manoeuvres, such as braking sharply at the bottom of a hill.

Replicating the shape and indentation of a rodent’s bite is a simple affair, achieved by the repeated application of a crocodile-clip. When I am finished I take the service elevator to the fourth floor and enter the men’s bathroom. There I wash the excess brake fluid from my fingers and wrap the crocodile-clip in a wad of toilet paper. This I flush.

As I leave, my phone beeps. A message from Frankie, who is anxious to secure the ounce of dope. I text him back, arranging a new drop-off for tomorrow. By then it is likely that my supervisor’s children will be half-orphaned. By then Frankie will be guilty of gross negligence.

I take a well-earned coffee break. I casually mention to Maura behind the canteen counter what I have heard about rats chewing through brake hoses. Maura is suitably aghast. Before I leave the canteen I have seen her tell the story to three customers. This is a method of mass communication only slightly less effective than skywriting. Up, up and away. Go tell the Spartans, etc.

My line for today is, When you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through. (Charles ‘Hank’ Bukowski)

 

 

I meet Frankie for a pint after work. We play some pool in an upstairs pool-hall, betting on the outcome of each frame, double-or-nothing each time.

‘Frankie, man, you’re sharking me over here. You’re a fucking hustler. Paul fucking Newman, man.’

Frankie is a big man, muscled and hulking, but he has a surprisingly delicate touch with a cue. I like him. Despite his obvious limitations, which include a deprived socio-economic background, Frankie is ambitious. He always has a plan.

Frankie wins six games on the bounce. I concede and shake his hand, in the process palming the ounce of dope. ‘Call it quits. What d’you say?’

Frankie is agreeable. He has just scored a couple of weeks worth of low-grade bliss. In the process he has implicated himself in the tragic elimination of my supervisor. Should the truth about tampered brakes emerge, Frankie cannot take to the witness stand, unless it is to confess to gross negligence. He would have to admit to a dereliction of duty in the pursuit of illegal narcotics, behaviour unlikely to impress prospective employers.

We go downstairs. The pints are on Frankie. He tells me about his latest plan, which is to translate his experience at the hospital into a company that will provide security staff for bars and nightclubs. The pitch is that the cost of employing Frankie’s well-trained bouncers will be less prohibitive than paying out insurance claims to customers who have been manhandled by delinquent primates. He has been to the bank, laid out the business plan, and all lights are green bar one tiny hitch: Frankie needs to go back to college. He needs a piece of paper that says he understands management theory, basic accounting, tax laws, etcetera, ad nauseum.

Frankie’s dilemma is that he can’t afford to take two years out to go to college, but he can’t afford not to either. His girlfriend and future life partner, Joanne, is not an especially demanding woman, but Frankie wants to achieve security and respectability on her behalf. Joanne’s interpretation of security and respectability includes a three-bed suburban semi, at least one car in the driveway and a non-negotiable one fortnight per year in sunnier climes. Aspirations such as these require cold cash, or at least the illusion of cold cash that lending institutions create.

Thus Frankie’s ambitions are reduced to hard currency. This is the process by which Frankie will be brought to heel. This is how Frankie becomes a meek cog in a machine that despises both meekness and cogs.

‘What about you?’ he says. ‘Anything cooking?’

He asks this because the income of a hospital porter is insufficient to qualify as adequate by the modern world’s expectations, which appear to be index-linked to inflation. Thus I should be plotting my escape. It does not occur to him that such a question would be offensive to a hospital porter who believed he was providing an invaluable service to society by taking on a job no one else wants. Sacrifice is passé. There’s no percentage in martyrdom these days, in the Western world at least.

‘Not really,’ I say. ‘I’ve enough on my plate working out how to blow up the hospital.’

‘Blow it up?’

‘Blow it up, close it down – what’s the fucking difference?’

He nods. ‘It’s some fucking dump, alright. Once I’m gone those fuckers can kiss my hairy hole.’ He sups again, frowning. ‘Y’know, I can’t think of anyone who wants to be working there. Not one fucking person. You’d only be doing them a favour if you blew it sky-high.’

‘Apparently a building that size only needs to move four or five feet in any direction. Gravity does the rest.’

He nods, drains his pint, then looks into the glass as he swirls the creamy head around the bottom. ‘Want to go again?’

Cassie has book club tonight, so I nod. ‘My twist,’ I say. ‘Put your money away, Frankie. Your money’s no good here.’

The pints arrive. I toast him. ‘Here’s to going back to college.’

‘To blowing up the hospital.’

We touch glasses and drink deep.

 

 

I stagger in from the pub, roll a joint, get some Cohen on the stereo. Open a fifth of McKinty. Now, now I am home. Here with Cohen and Bukowski, Waits and Genet – this is where I live, here is where I belong, horizontal in the gutter of intentional squalor, desperate to ingratiate myself with those who have lived in the shadows, in the margins, in italics, in extremis.

Cohen and God have this much in common: I am vaguely aware that I owe them something significant for a gift they did not necessarily intend me to receive, and I am helpless in the face of my inability to repay them.

I suck down a lungful of pure Thai, feel it blossom like ink in water. I press play on the stereo. ‘Is This What You Wanted’ lurches to its feet, Cohen’s voice that of a cancer patient girding his loins for yet another blast of chemo. The voice is the very articulation of humanity: a monotonous procession of shackled grace notes hinting at the impossible wish to negate the contradiction of consciousness, which is to be alive and still hope to be pure.

Cassie and I bring her niece to feed the swans. The morning is bright and sunny, the river gleaming, sinuous. Cassie’s niece is named for the heroine of a Russian novel. With all the impertinent innocence of those who have yet to learn that the world demands, on pain of persecution, a homogeneity of signifier and signified, Anna calls the swans ‘Pollys’. Innocence is yet another manifestation of purity, and Anna’s high-pitched squeals, as she throws shreds of bread to the impervious Pollys, are all the more delightful for the impending pollution of that innocence. Innocence, purity and beauty evoke the same sensation in the aware observer: awe shot through with a frisson of impending catastrophe, like freshly squeezed orange juice cut with the blade of an early morning vodka.

But where are we? We are not standing on the bank of the Garavogue, thrilling to the sharp scent of cut grass. We are not half-blinded by the glare of a rising sun reflecting off the river. We are not anticipating the imminent disaster that attends all manifestations of beauty, purity and innocence. There are no Pollys, no nieces named for Russian heroines, no Cassie. We are at home, where we belong, in the gutter of intentional squalor.

But where are we, really?

The soundtrack is that of Cohen’s ‘New Skin for the Old Ceremony’, but can we depend on soundtracks to root our perceptions of reality? Surely the point of art is to diffuse reality, to make it more acceptable, perhaps even digestible. Is it possible to slum it with Cohen and Bukowski and still smell the cut grass, to hear bubbles of childish glee float away across the river on the clear morning air?

Of this I know as much as you. There are times when the only rational answer is ‘Maybe’. In an infinite universe, anything is possible, including God.

‘New Skin’ finishes with ‘Leaving Green Sleeves’ just as the windows begin to grey behind the blinds, just as countless nieces named for Russian heroines wake in anticipation of feeding the Pollys, just as countless millions rise from their beds with all the urgency of Cohen’s voice, those millions whose day-to-day existence is a relentless course of emotional chemotherapy, those billions who do not have the luxury of deciding whether or not to slum it, to choose squalor over beauty, to lie horizontal in the gutters or recline on the cushions of comfort.

The only honest question is this: do you choose pain or oblivion?

The only sane, reasonable answer is: maybe.

 

 

A brief list of creatures who have repeatedly survived the mass extinctions that have claimed up to 80 percent of all living material:

 

sharks

roaches

spiders

beetles

snakes

crocodiles

bacterium

 

None of the above are prospective Teddy Bear material. None of them lend themselves to the kind of cuddly anthropomorphism that might inspire a young child to take a giant stuffed roach, say, to bed at night. A croc is a croc, even in Peter Pan. A snake is a snake, even in The Jungle Book. The merchandising spin-offs to DreamWorks’ Shark Tale failed to meet expectations.

True survivors inspire fear, revulsion and disgust. Primo Levi might well have confirmed the truth of this for us, but alas, Primo is no more.

Thus, this: our mission is to inspire fear, revulsion and disgust.

My line for today is, Nothing could be decently hated except eternity. (Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard)

 

 

The one-legged mechanic returns. While he was away he signed up for health insurance, which allows him to request a private room. This may or may not be a green light. This may or may not be an old man waving a white flag. This may or may not be a red flag to yours truly, I, Karlsson.

A rainbow arcs out over the hospital. A spectrum of possibilities presents itself for examination, X-ray and dissection. Each must be investigated. We cannot afford to draw hasty conclusions here. A man’s life is at stake.

I wheel my cart into his room. He appears to have shrunk and hardened. He has balled himself into a fist to shake at the world, charged with adrenaline and poised between fight or flight. The eyes are shelled peas, his pallor faintly olive. He is glad to see me.

‘Ah, the writer.’ Alone in the private room, he has removed his dentures, so that his mouth wobbles loosely when he speaks. ‘How’s that story coming on, son?’

‘It didn’t work out.’ I shrug. ‘In any other circumstance I’d say it was good to see you again.’

He grins ruefully. ‘What can you do, son? The mind thinks one thing and the body goes ahead and does what it wants to do.’

I allow a respectful moment to pass. ‘Has it spread?’

He taps his knee with the butt of his palm. ‘They don’t know. They say I should be showing signs of progress and they have me back in for tests.’

‘What is it they’re looking for?’

‘I’m probably best off not knowing.’

This is a hospital accountant’s wet dream: a relatively healthy patient who possesses insurance and is unconcerned as to the outcome of an indefinitely prolonged series of expensive examinations.

‘Want me to ask?’ I say. ‘If you change your mind, I can probably find out.’

He shakes his head. ‘No news is good news, son.’

He sticks with the peach yoghurt and Dairy Milk, reaches for the battered leather purse on the bedside locker. I wave him off. ‘Consider it a welcome-back gift.’

‘Appreciate it, son.’

I wheel my cart out of his room. The corridor is ablaze with red rags, green lights, white flags. The blood pounds in my ears. Tomorrow I bomb Cambodia back to the Stone Age.

Maybe.

 

•

 

‘Remind me,’ Billy says, ‘that we need to get a letter from the old man. For Cassie, like.’

‘You’re going to bump him off?’

‘I don’t know. I like the guy. Being honest, I don’t want him to go.’

‘Even if he wants to?’

‘That’s his choice, sure. But I don’t have to be the one who makes it happen.’

‘True.’

He sips his cappuccino, leaving a little frothy moustache on his upper lip.

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘about the whole blowing up the hospital thing.’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, most books come in around ninety or a hundred thousand words. We’re nearly halfway there already and we still haven’t come up with a plausible plan.’

‘Leave it with me,’ he says.

‘I’ve been leaving it with you.’

‘Yeah . . .’ He tugs at the tip of his nose, then discovers the creamy cappuccino moustache and wipes it away. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘how would you feel if I went ahead and wrote that up myself?’

‘Sound, no problem. Just so I know there’s something happening.’

‘What I mean is, I write those sections up, then deliver them to you when we’re finished.’

‘How do you mean, when we’re finished?’

‘When the book’s done.’

‘What’re you talking about, Billy? The whole point of redrafting is to blow up the hospital. I can’t write around that not knowing what you’re saying. It’d be a train-wreck.’

‘Call it an experiment,’ he says.

‘In wrecking trains, yeah.’

‘I hear you, man. But . . .’

‘But what?’

He glances away, and suddenly I realise what the problem is. ‘You think I’m going to steal your idea?’ I say. ‘You think I’m going to plagiarise you?’

‘You’ve never come up with anything like it before,’ he says.

‘Leaving the ethics of it aside,’ I say, ‘and saying I do steal your idea, what’s to stop you pulling another trick like putting Rosie in the shed? Or maybe dropping her in the pond this time?’

An angry flash in the Newman-blue eye. ‘I won’t tell you again,’ he says. ‘I didn’t put Rosie in any fucking shed.’

‘I didn’t do it. And Debs damn sure didn’t do it.’

He stares. Then he shakes his head, disappointed.

‘So who put Rosie in the shed?’ I persist. ‘There’s no way she could have crawled all the way out there herself.’

He shrugs, then gathers together his notebooks and pen, his papers, and packs them away in his satchel. ‘You’re a fucking nutcase,’ he says, getting up. He touches his fore and middle fingers to his lips, then waggles them at me. A catch in his throat. ‘Give Rosie a kiss from Uncle Billy.’

Then he slouches away across the decking and disappears behind the stand of bamboo.

 

 

Three days pass with no sign of Billy. I believe he is sulking and will return when he realises he needs me more than he needs his self-pity.

After a week, though, I start to wonder if he’s ever coming back.

This leaves me contemplating a half-finished redraft, which is akin to going to work in my underwear for the rest of my life. Who wants to be found dead in only their underwear?

A half blown-up hospital isn’t much of a metaphor.

Debs arrives from the doctor’s with Rosie’s test results.

‘Asthma,’ she says. She is dangerously calm.

‘Shit. That young?’

‘The doctor asked how often we dust and hoover. I said it was every week or so.’ This is a lie. The C-section means Debs can’t hoover, or dust anything over shoulder height, which in turn means the house hasn’t been properly dusted since Rosie was born. ‘And she asked if either of us smoke.’

‘You know I’ve only ever smoked upstairs.’

‘Doesn’t matter. She says anywhere in the house is bad news.’

‘So it’s my fault?’

‘It’s not a matter of blame, it’s how we can help Rosie now. Which means you stop smoking or only smoke outside. You know which one I’d prefer,’ she adds.

‘I can’t write without smoking. You know this.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘To you, maybe.’

‘Then you’ll have to convert the shed or something.’

‘You’re serious.’

‘A baby with asthma. That’s serious.’

‘Okay, yeah. I hear you. I’ll take a look at the shed and see if it’ll work.’

She says something about the cost of medicines, but all I can hear is a rushing in my ears, a wheezing become a whirlwind roar.

 

 

The following morning I’m up at the hospital early, heading for the smoking area where the porters congregate for their pre-work toke.

Billy joins me as I leave the car park, appearing from nowhere to fall in beside me.

‘Apology accepted,’ he says.

He seems different. Something weary about him.

‘We need to talk,’ I say.

‘You heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘About Austin.’

‘No. What about him?’

‘Topped himself, didn’t he?’ Bitterness leaking like a toxic spill. ‘Took this big fucking scissors . . .’ He tilts his chin in the air, pulls his fists together under his Adam’s apple. ‘Nearly sliced his fucking head off, they reckon.’

‘Fuck, Billy.’

‘Fuck won’t cover it, man. Fuck won’t even nearly cover it.’

‘You can’t hold yourself––’

He wheels around under the walkway connecting the old and new hospital buildings. ‘He didn’t go topping himself while he had a fucking job, did he? Happy as a pig in shite, he was, smoking his fucking head off. And where is he now? Fucking nowhere, that’s where he is.’

A choke in his throat, the Newman-blue eye glittering.

‘Billy . . .’

‘I can’t deal with this right now,’ he says. ‘Just . . . I don’t know.’ He turns away, sucks down a deep breath. ‘I just can’t deal with it.’

‘Okay.’ I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s fine. Get back to me whenever you think you’re––’

He shakes off my hand and takes a step or two away. Then he stops, takes another deep breath. ‘It’s not just Austin,’ he says, without turning around.

‘What is it?’

Even from behind I can see him swallow hard. He pats the pockets of his jacket, comes up with a folded piece of paper. ‘Here,’ he says, holding it out. Its creases are worn brown.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s, uh, it’s Cassie.’ He turns. Tears stream down his face, both sides, from the empty socket behind the eye-patch too. His face wizening like a Tayto packet exposed to flame.

‘Jesus, Billy. What’s wrong, man?’

‘She lost it,’ he whispers. ‘It’s gone. Fucking gone.’

 

•

 

She went away to nothing before she ever began. Like some particle a-blink in its own future, borrowing too heavily, too improbably, against her fully being. Gone in a wink, as a bloody smear, a slim trickle. No more and no less. No less than enough, at least, to see her a girl. Squinting at the ultrasound, coached by the midwife, we bore witness to the strangest of all true revelations: eyes and a mouth, the tiny bumps that would have become toes.

An inch, she was. Oh, the miles she had come to come so far. The light-years. The thirty thousand billion cells. The trillions of particles, the number of random collisions to create a thinking thing. All lost, wasted, gone.

Did she think, though? Had she even a dim awareness of her floating? Amniotic is such a cold word and yet no colder than space, she her own sun and we revolving in orbits drilled in the void by her gravity’s pull. We gave her a name, blue eyes, a birthday, and decided she would have had Cassie’s heart and my build. Her own sense of humour.

Impolitic, of course, to mourn so hard for one so fragile. Not the done thing in this day and age. Shush your snuffles now, lest the abortionists grow sensitive to whispers of murder. A child-to-be lost is shield and weapon. If you must, if you really must, turn that sword on yourself and fall upon, but fall silent, with honour. Pierce no womb but your own.

Some day the sun will flicker and go out, leaving all cold and still. Some day, and not soon enough, the planets will wobble in their orbits and start their slow decline to the singularity left behind, that miniscule nothing with the power to draw All to itself, and in, and then gone forever.

 

•

 

They did the math and decided it must have happened out in Lissadell, stoned immaculate, Antony and the Johnsons for a soundtrack. Curled up on a blanket in a cosy dune, the idea being to wait for sunrise, except they were nicely toasted, and Billy had finally accepted that love was as essential as cruelty.

And now it’s gone.

‘I’m so sorry, Billy. I didn’t know.’

He wolfs down a lungful of spliff, his expression bleak. ‘How could you? We told no one.’

‘How’s Cassie?’

‘Broken.’

‘I know, it’s a tough––’

‘She’s broken,’ he insists. ‘Busted. Snapped in fucking two. No fixing her.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘it’s no consolation, but it happened to Debs and me too. I mean, I’ve been where you are. I know how it feels. If you need someone to talk to . . .’

‘You know how you felt,’ he says. ‘That’s just projection.’

‘Sure, but I can empathise with––’

‘Spare me. Listen,’ he says, dropping the spliff, grinding it out with his heel, ‘I have to go.’ He hands across the sheaf of papers. ‘That’s where I’m up to right now,’ he says. ‘But I should warn you, you mightn’t like where it’s going.’

‘It is what it is, Billy.’

‘Isn’t it just?’

I watch him shuffle off, then go inside and downstairs to find a quiet corner in the canteen, sip on a weak coffee.

Despite his heartbreak, Billy has been a busy boy.

In his absence I toast him with the weak coffee. When Debs had her miscarriage, I was hard put to write my own name, let alone do any serious work. Sounds melodramatic, I know, but it felt like a death.

No reason it shouldn’t. The doctors and scientists, the pragmatists, can say what they like about cell bundles, draw time-lines to their hearts’ content. But life is life.

How not to mourn its absence, its potential, its hope?

Pandora, my muse.

 

•

 

Good news, people: my supervisor does not die in a car wreck. He does not apply the brakes of his Opel Corsa too sharply as he underestimates a tight bend, and so does not experience the gut-sucking horror of impending Nothingness.

He lives!

O joy, O rapture, etc.

Bear with me, people. Apply logic at all times. What is to be gained from the death of my supervisor? More importantly, what do I lose? I lose anonymity and gain the title of prime suspect.

There’s no percentage in the breaking-in of a new supervisor. Plus, the guy already drives like a chimp with three bananas. It’s only a matter of time before he takes himself out.

Be aware, at all times, that words are only tools. Do not be lulled by apparent patterns. Resist the seductive blandishments of cosily sequential icons. History has its own agenda.

 

 

The hospital is an imposing edifice. Technically speaking, it is two imposing edifices, connected to one another by a long glass corridor.

The first building belongs to an era of tuberculosis, vaulted ceilings and Cuban crisis. The second is a more contemporary construction. It boasts an excess of glass coupled with manifold variations on a theme of polished surface, an essential element of the contemporary urban experience.

Shop windows, car mirrors, reflective tiles, buffed floors, aluminium frames, plate glass: it is possible to walk from one end of a modern city to the other without once losing sight of yourself. This may or may not be a sop to the multitudes wracked with doubts as to their very existence. It may or may not be to facilitate the raging narcissism that has colonised society’s soul. I project, therefore I am.

These days we stare into Medusa’s eyes and see only our own reflection. Already bored, our eyes glaze over before we have time to be transfixed.

The hospital was built on a hill overlooking the town. Its domination of its environment presupposes the need for justification. Once upon a time, churches were built on hills too. This may or may not be a coincidence. This may or may not be because it falls to hospitals today to provide hope and consolation, or because people today lack the imagination to diagnose spiritual ailments.

This may or may not be because people refuse to believe that a service provided free can have worth and/or value. It may be time for libraries and churches to start charging admission. Thus people will come to believe they are missing out on an experience of worth and/or value. Pews will overflow. Vestibules will become as clogged as A&E departments. Penitents will throng the book-lined aisles.

I go searching for the architect’s blueprints of the hospital plans. In theory this should be a simple operation, but I am hampered by the fact that I cannot march down to the Town Hall and request a copy of the plans. I am hamstrung by the need for anonymity. Instead I try searching my old friend and inert tool, the internet. This requires time and imagination, but lo and behold, etc.

I download said blueprints, then print, frame and hang them. Said blueprints are art in that they are as aesthetically pleasing as they are functionally effective. They convey specific information that allow the mind to configure a 3-D image. The reverse is also true, reading from the aesthetic to the functional, in that it can be as enjoyable to see how an edifice was constructed as it is to contemplate the finished project.

I while away many pleasant hours staring at the blueprints. I come to know them intimately. Eventually we share our dirty little secrets. I tell the blueprints of my ambition to destroy the building they represent. The blueprints, locked away in a dark and dusty basement below City Hall, denied the glory the building commands, whisper to me of their bunker.

This bunker, they whisper, is an air-tight chamber. It was incorporated into the design of the larger public buildings built during the era of tuberculosis, vaulted ceilings and Cuban crisis. Not a lot of people know that, they whisper. But then, not a lot of people were intended to find shelter when the first mushroom clouds began to darken the horizon.

Survival has never been a right, I tell the blueprints. Survival has always been a matter of hard-earned elitism.

I take the framed blueprints of the hospital down off the wall. I scan said blueprints intently. I find said bunker, an underground monument to the hubris that presumed we were worth the waste of a good warhead. It lies to the rear of the hospital, built into the hill beneath the morgue and situated close to a support pillar. A ventilation shaft ascends at a sixty-degree angle to emerge on the hillside behind the hospital.

This is interesting. This is promising.

As I push my cart along the glass corridor that connects the hospital’s buildings, I am reminded that in ancient Corinth two temples stood side-by-side: one to Violence, the other to Necessity.

My line for today is, If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. (Corinthians 15:19)

If this succeeds, I want to be tried as a war criminal.

 

•

 

I’m folding up the sheaf of paper, tucking it into my back pocket, when a matron comes squeak-squeaking to my table. She makes a production number of looking at her watch.

‘Shouldn’t you be in uniform?’ she says. ‘It’s already ten after.’ She tut-tuts. ‘Once you’re properly attired,’ she says, ‘I’d be very grateful if you’d come up to the fifth floor and remove the sharps bags. They’re piling up in there. I don’t think they’ve been cleared out for three days.’

‘But I’m not––’

‘But me no buts,’ she says, a tortured squeak of rubber as she turns on her heel and bustles off.

 

•

 

O Holy Fathers, I would have liked to have been innocent of something. I would have liked it had my guilt not been so total, inevitable, pre-ordained and visible. I was fallen before I could breathe, sentenced in the womb lest the non-meaning of my first wails made a mockery of your judgement.

Hear me now: your baptismal rite is a slave’s charter, designed to allow the oppressed to absolve their masters of the burden of applying the shackles.

Hear this: I would scalp your monks had they hair worth taking.

O Holy Fathers, I absolve myself of baptism but accept your Original Sin. I welcome your taint, that melanomic stain, the bubonic darkening of your darling Augustine. I turn the other cheek to accept your gauntlet and die with the poets in each and every one of your misty Russian dawns.

All I ask is that you observe the protocols and honour me with the privilege of allowing you to shoot first, and that you then accept responsibility for the consequent hell to pay.

I ask that you allow me to become the source of your fears, the brunt of your inarticulate rage, the aesthetic flourish to your base functionality. Between us we can be art. Is the duel’s mise en scène not the epitome of those symbiotic parasites, art and death?

Understand this: I have no choice but to pick up your gauntlet. According to your rules, I possess free will and the right to choose, and I choose to take umbrage. It is a matter of honour, and in a pitiless universe dignity is all.

Remember that this is your game we are playing. All I am trying to do is live down to your expectations. I am the dog to which you gave a bad name, the demon seed you planted in the womb. I am the thirty pieces of silver the first simonists paid Judas to take the fall.

Judge not, lest ye be wasting your time.

It would have been too easy to accept your censure and walk away. This way we’re going to have some fun.

Be warned: if hope and decency are your only weapons, I will be the last man standing.

I choose the hospital as an appropriate venue. Shall we say pistols at dawn in the shadows of your bright and shiny temples to hope, miracles and resurrection?

My line for today is: You will ask why did I worry myself with such antics. Answer: because it was very dull to sit with one’s hands folded, and so one began cutting capers. (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground)

 

 

I like to think of the bomb as a de-architecturaliser. This nonsense word allows me to tell my conscience that I have a philosophy, although my conscience remains unconvinced.

A conscience is what makes decisions interesting. Everyone needs a conscience, if only for its comic relief.

My conscience is a grizzled, one-eyed leprechaun who realised too late you only get one pot of gold.

So I tell my conscience that his pot of gold is buried in the hospital’s foundations. This keeps my conscience paralysed in a state of conflicted moral relativism. One man’s terrorist is another man’s gold-digging freedom fighter, etc.

Meanwhile I get on with the business in hand. To wit: what is the most practical way of causing a large building to violently shift four or five feet in any direction?

On perusing the great buildings of history, our old friend the internet offers up the following snippet: a narrow shaft extended from the main burial chamber through the body of the later pyramids to point directly at the stars, the idea being to project the recently deceased pharaoh to his rightful resting place with the gods. In the illustration accompanying this juicy morsel, this shaft is uncannily similar to the ventilation shaft emanating from the bunker in the basement of our hospital.

‘Listen,’ I tell my grizzled one-eyed leprechaun, ‘it looks like we might be dealing with a bona fide resurrection machine here.’

‘Begorrah, bollocks and fiddle-dee-dee,’ says he. ‘Where’s me pot of fuckin’ gold?’

 

 

Today I drift through the hospital. Today I feel disembodied, wraith-like. Today’s essential duties include:

 

Unblocking a toilet in the women’s bathrooms on the fifth floor;

Shaving the genital area of two male patients as part of their preparations for minor surgical procedures;

The disposal of seventeen bags of accumulated waste from Female Surgical in a manner designated environmentally sound;

The transport of four tall cylinders of highly flammable gas from their delivery point on the ground floor to the storage area in the basement;

The shredding and incineration of six trolley-loads of paper waste that includes medical case histories and various types of files of a sensitive nature;

Pushing the wheelchair of an obese female patient up to the sixth floor for a physiotherapy session designed to kick-start the circulation in her feet; and

The delivery of a corpse from the Intensive Care Unit on the seventh floor to the morgue in the basement.

 

All of these tasks can be completed with a minimum of conversation, instruction, eye contact or any other form of communication. The porter – or janitor, handyman, gofer – can move through a busy public building virtually unnoticed. So long as you keep your shirt tucked in, no one will feel it necessary to speak to you. A good gofer can slip from floor to floor like a shovel-nosed snake through sand, constructing a labyrinth of invisible tunnels that provide myriad paths of least resistance. A good gofer will take care to ensure that such a labyrinth does not undermine the edifice to the point where it must collapse, unless such is the plan.

A good gofer is defined by his absence. He should lack drive, ambition and the imagination to fully realise the extent of his squalid condition.

Cassie fails to understand this. In this respect Cassie has yet to evolve. She still insists on confusing ambition with socio-economic viability.

‘The money’s the McGuffin, Cass. Financial security is just the halo that shimmers around the mirage.’ I tell her that the terms of the IMF bailout mean that the banks have cost Ireland five euro per day, every day, since the Big Bang. ‘What matters,’ I say, ‘is making a difference. Two people can still make a difference.’

Cassie is outraged. She thinks I am slighting her profession, and her status within that profession. ‘You’re saying one person can’t make a difference?’

‘Two could make a bigger difference. Call it a difference squared.’

‘Why does it have to be a big difference? What’s wrong with just making a difference?’

‘If you’re going to make a difference, go long. Michelangelo didn’t fuck around painting kennel ceilings. The universe came in with a bang, not a whimper.’

‘We can’t all be Michelangelo, K.’

This to me is a true lack of ambition. This is a rationalisation that allows success to be confused with contentment. This is the kind of thinking that allows people to consider ongoing failure an aspirational lifestyle. This is confirmation that the bar has been lowered, perhaps fatally. It is the mentality that has facilitated the mutation of hospitals into rooming houses, flop joints and doss-house kips. This validates defeatism and helps create a culture in which a missing box of anti-depressants from a particular storage area every few months is not regarded as noteworthy.

The petty pilfering in an average hospital exists at levels approaching endemic. A box of Band Aids here, a package of antiseptic wipes there. Syringes and needles, pristine scalpels, a pack of latex gloves, rolls of bandage, surgeons’ scrubs. Once in a while, a tall cylinder of flammable gas.

My line for today comes courtesy of the non-violent anarchist French philosopher, Jean-Pierre Proudhon: Property is theft.

 

 

Herostratus chose to destroy a temple. We could have picked out a church too, but that would have been too easy. We could have targeted a library but no one would have noticed. We could have decided on a bank but that would have made us heroes. We could have selected a school but that would have been self-sabotage.

We are partisans from the future operating behind the lines of the present. Thus our target must possess the worth and relevance that temples once offered to ancient civilisations. Thus our target must represent the intrinsic values of faith and hope that have sustained civilisations down through the ages.

Somewhere between hope and faith lies the truth of the human condition.

An erect building is a shackled slave. I hear the mutinous grumbling of vertical buildings. I hear the grinding frustration of those compelled against their will to remain standing. A building is energy crucified against space and time.

The latent energy of a building forced to stand against its will is an awesomely potent force. E = MC², etc. In theory, the destructive potential inherent in each and every building on the planet is the envy of nuclear warheads.

Buildings scream, beseeching the god of brick and mortar to release them from slavery. Buildings await their Moses, their Messiah, their physical and spiritual delivery from perpetual, angular erectness.

It is our moral duty to nudge buildings into bliss. Assisting in the process is an obligation.

If I am to be considered guilty, people, you will need to adapt your legislation to include noblesse oblige.

 

 

It is inevitable, perhaps, that I get a new supervisor. This guy is late-twenties, tall and bony, with sticky-out ears. Viewed from behind he resembles a dart with prematurely grey hair. Nonetheless, he believes he is hip. Hence the black roll-neck sweater, the spectacles with thick brown frames.

‘Karlsson,’ he says, ‘as far as I’m concerned, everyone starts with a clean slate. I judge each case on its own merits.’

‘Yes, sir.’

We are in his office, which is the office his predecessor occupied before him. He is lounging behind the desk swivelling in the orthopaedic chair he has introduced to improve his posture while he works. He laughs, working the solidarity angle.

‘Karlsson, my name is Joe. If you call me sir again I’ll have you charged with insubordination.’

This is irony as he understands it.

‘Sure thing, Joe.’

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Now,’ he waves dismissively at the papers on his desk, ‘I understand that you and my predecessor didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Any idea why that might be?’

‘I’m five-four, Joe. The guy was at least six foot.’

He har-dee-hars with abandon. This guy, he’s on my side. He gets me.

‘Seriously though,’ he says, ‘give me your side of it.’

I frown in the hope of mimicking low cunning. ‘Really?’

‘Absolutely.’

I say, ‘Joe, I’m going to say something I hope you can keep to yourself.’

This buys me a sitting forward in the orthopaedic chair and a pair of elbows on the desk. He joins his palms with the forefingers brushing his lips, which are also prematurely grey. He moves his joined hands to one side to say, ‘Anything discussed in this room is confidential, Karlsson. Nothing leaves this room.’

‘Okay.’ I pause for effect, swallow hard. ‘Joe, I think that maybe I’ve become what they call institutionalised.’ He nods. I cough dryly to convey embarrassment. ‘I don’t know, maybe it’s the way the job can be so impersonal. There’s days when you don’t know if what you do matters, or if anyone even notices you’re there. I . . . ah, I don’t know.’

He seizes the opportunity. He tilts his joined hands forward until the forefingers are pointing at me. ‘Y’know, that feeling is far more common than you might think. Recent studies have shown that employees in large organisations are more and more frequently experiencing feelings of anxiety directly related to their role in the workplace. The fear of unfulfilled potential is a powerful psychic inhibitor.’

I smile tentatively and nod him on. He continues in a similar vein for ten minutes or so, during which he perambulates around the office, occasionally breaking off into awkward silences that suggest that he too has experienced such traumas. One such awkward silence stretches out interminably until such time as I realise he has finished his speech. He is back behind the desk and gazing at me expectantly, his eyes wide and prematurely grey behind the ironically thick frames.

I resist the temptation to applaud. ‘Joe, I’ll be honest with you.’ I stare at the carpet while saying this. ‘If I thought there was just one person who believed in me, just one person giving me credit for the work I do, well, I don’t know. But it’d be something, at least.’

I look up. He’s nodding. ‘Karlsson, we don’t want anyone to feel they’re on their own. If there’s one person in this building feeling that way, we’ve failed. If you ever get to feeling like that, come see me and we’ll talk. My door is always open. Like I said before, everyone starts with a clean slate.’

He stands up and reaches across the desk to shake hands. His grip is dry and firm. ‘Here’s to clean slates,’ he says.

‘Clean slates, Joe.’

He is chalk.

 

 

I go through the files I have rescued from premature oblivion in the hospital incinerator. These mute files have stories to tell. Upon my shoulders falls the burden of ensuring they fulfil their potential. A shredded file is an inhibited psyche. A shredded file is a once-smoking gun.

I pick one at random. It pertains to a surgical procedure involving the removal of a cancerous testicle, highlighting the fact that the wrong testicle was removed during the procedure.

Cassie sticks her head around the door. She looks at the files spread out on the bed, then frowns when she sees I am wearing latex gloves.

‘What’s all this?’ she says.

‘Just some shit from work. There’s some new hygiene practice being implemented, we’re supposed to be up to speed by the end of the week.’ I waggle my hands. ‘The gloves are part of it. Kinky, no?’

‘Boh-ring.’

‘Tell me about it.’ I shrug. ‘It won’t take long, maybe an hour or so.’

‘Fancy a coffee?’

‘Yeah, that’d be nice.’

She leaves. I pick another file. This pertains to a stillborn infant buried without its parents’ consent, which was obtained six hours after the infant was actually interred. The main issue here is sequencing. Sub-issues include respect, human rights and dignity.

Cass comes back with the coffee. She puts it on the bedside locker. ‘Want a hand? I could quiz you on the new protocols.’

Cassie is quietly delighted that I am engaged in extra-curricular activities that may or may not enhance my prospects of promotion.

‘No thanks, hon, that’s okay. It’s a piece of piss, really. But it’d be a big help if you could cook dinner this evening.’

‘I think it’s my twist anyway. What do you fancy?’

‘I’m not fussed.’

We decide on spag bol. I pick another file at random. This one pertains to an emergency room misdiagnosis that confused a three-year-old’s incipient meningitis with the symptoms of a twenty-four-hour ’flu bug. These things happen. Doctors get as tired as anyone else when they’ve been on their feet thirty-six hours straight. Doctors are not omniscient. They make mistakes. If mistakes end badly, they are called tragedies. If mistakes end well, they are deemed genius. Evolution depends on mistakes. Mistakes are the false starts that don’t hear the starter’s pistol crack the second time.

I pick another file. This one is thick. It pertains to a faulty X-ray machine, and cross-references other files that contain information on every X-ray conducted by the faulty machine for the eighteen months or so it took to detect the fault. In theory, this file alone has the potential to bankrupt the Health Service Executive.

I slip each file into a manila envelope and write each file’s relevant name and address on the front. I stamp them, then go through to the kitchen. Cassie is putting plates on the table. She looks up, surprised. ‘Don’t tell me you’re finished already?’

‘Yeah, it was a doddle. I’ll be back in a minute, I need to get some smokes. Want anything from the shop?’

‘I don’t know. Surprise me.’

‘Fine, I’ll get you a giraffe.’

I drive across town. At a corner shop I pick up a pack of tobacco and a bar of peppermint chocolate for Cassie. I post the envelopes.

My line for today is the last request of the noted American labour activist, Joe Hill: Don’t mourn. Organise.