Catastrophe Practice (38 page)

There were soldiers sitting in trucks with rifles sticking up; or, if they had been toys, with spikes up their arses.

Some of the crowd from the newspaper office had made their way to the green. There was another boy with a loud-hailer as if he was carrying his head underneath his arm. Occasionally he put it to his mouth: then took it away: she thought — It is as if he were being tortured. A fireman on a ladder seemed to have been overcome by fumes: he drooped, the pee flopping from his hose lethargically. She thought — Old people become incontinent: our life-support system needs to be switched off: we are an experiment that has taken a wrong turning. Sparks seemed to be flying above the rooftops: she thought — Petrouchka, with his arms out flailing: or a column, drawn by six white horses, rising to a height of several thousand feet. Ambulances had come on to the green. They were spreading their lights like a net, as if to catch victims.

She had the almost physical impression of her body, as if on a hook, being raised or lowered to or from — where? — the sky? the flies of a theatre? her elbows to her sides and her toes turned inwards to lessen the pain: the line held by an old man like God, dressed in thigh-length boots like a woman —

People were carrying a body on a stretcher. The water was being turned off in the hoses. The doors of an ambulance were open. The façade of the Old Science Buildings was lit like the backdrop of a stage. The fireman on top of the ladder was hanging from a harness. The Old Science Buildings seemed to be like a person who had had molten lead poured down his throat. Some of the firemen were wearing gas-masks. She thought — Do firemen usually wear gas-masks?

There was a stinging in her eyes: a tightness in her throat. People around her were pulling out handkerchiefs and coughing.

Within the façade of the grey stone building she imagined she could see — the backdrop of the building dissolving as the lights came on as it were behind the stage — the rooms, cells, cages, as if of a mind; the puppets in their boxes; the actors in
their rooms making up, dressing and undressing; like wasps in a nest; a brain; an organism with the skin torn off; but still with herself watching. She thought — Do I make it with my mind, this honeycomb?

Two trucks with soldiers in them suddenly started up and drove away. They ran straight over the rope of the cordon, dragging it after them.

The policeman who had come from the entrance to the grey stone building had put down on the ground not far in front of her the round object that was like a bomb or a reel of film. She looked at it. She thought — But that is Anderson's film! I know it! It has his name on it.

Policemen were walking, in twos and threes, towards the doors of houses round the perimeter of the green. They were eighteenth-century houses with lights coming on.

The fireman on the ladder was hanging from his harness.

Judith picked up the reel of film. She thought — Under a sky at night: in a brain: there are these coincidences; connections.

She walked down the edge of the green towards the river. The river, with a shadow that might be a body in it, ran down towards the sea; with whirlpools, underneath willows.

She thought she would kneel, and dip in the hem of her skirt, and hold it to her face, and make a pattern of her face there. The body seemed to have been a log. The stuff of her skirt against her face would be as if she were being immortalised on a shroud; or tortured.

She thought — I could pretend I am sick; have fallen; I will be picked up by hands that are there to catch me.

The log — if it was a log: she was on the bank of the river — seemed to be moving in the opposite direction to the current. When she had been on the bridge, looking over, it had not seemed that this was the way to the sea. She thought — The map was in my mind: what is the reality?

She began to walk along a path by the river. The path, she thought, would make a long curve and come out by the bridge between the area of rubble and the avenue of cherry trees. There, on one side, would be the advertisements of guns hanging down and legs being blown open like wounds: on the
other, of bits of broken glass like sunlight on a cot.

She thought — Children see by what they learn: what was it I have seen? a sort of wonder, breaking.

The stars in the night sky were so beautiful! There was a gate, to a footbridge, over the river. It went to an island, where there was a willow tree and an allotment. She thought — But I have been here before! there was a caravan, and an old woman digging.

— I can explain: Do you remember me?

Or — I am ill, can you help me?

He, Anderson, had said — Why should one want to become ill? To be protected?

She had said — Who lives here? He had said — She is our. She put a foot over the gate. There were spikes underneath her. She thought — At least they will not go up me as if I were a policeman.

When she had come here before, she had thought he, Anderson, was going to make love to her —

She had said — Who lives here? He had said — She is our good godmother in the fairy tale.

She was climbing over the gate. The footbridge went over a branch of the river.

What we are trying to get rid of, she thought — in our practice: our acting: in the Old Science Buildings — is the image of ourselves as dolls, painted cheeks, stiff movements: only coming alive when wounded. — Turn my head, put my hair behind my ear, wait while I am picked up. Trapped in this form — Help me! Putting one foot over the edge of the footbridge she said quietly, ‘Help me!'

Beyond the bridge, over the river, was the allotment. Beyond the allotment was the caravan; and what looked like, yes again, an old woman digging. But in the dark There were an oil lamp, a table, a bottle of wine, a fire: there were shadows thrown upwards on trees.

Judith thought — Something waiting to be born; here and now; as it once was from that crack in the rocks in Africa —

Quietly, her skirt outspread like Ophelia, she stepped, or fell, into the river.

She was in fact wearing jeans. She thought — How far is it to the bottom?

By pressing outwards with her legs she could stand on mud, which went up between her legs quietly —

— Should she not rest for a while in any wild struggling, which only made her sink down deeper and deeper —

The old woman appeared above her. She was like a finger pointing down. She said ‘What happened?'

Judith said ‘I slipped and fell in.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Well can you get out?'

‘I think so.'

The old woman sat down on the footbridge.

The mud, which Judith had stepped in up to her thighs, was cold.

The old woman said ‘Do you want me to make it difficult for you to get out, or something?'

Judith thought — I could pull you in on top of me!

The old woman said ‘Or would it be better for you if you pulled me in, and then climbed out on top of me?'

She held a foot out to her over the river.

Judith, with the help of the foot, pulled herself towards the footbridge.

The old woman said ‘Would you like some hot soup?'

Judith said ‘Yes please.'

The woman turned and went back to the encampment.

Judith dragged herself out on to the bridge. There was mud clinging to her legs and thighs. She thought — Like an afterbirth?

Then — We do this to stay alive?

She walked towards the caravan.

The old woman, Eleanor, was sitting by the fire stirring a cauldron. By the fire was a clothes line with a nappy.

Eleanor said ‘Leeks and potatoes.'

Judith said ‘Is Lilia here?'

Eleanor said ‘Yes, and the baby.'

Judith thought — Well, am I not becoming used to this sort
of thing?

Eleanor said ‘You can take off your clothes.' She stirred her soup.

Judith went to the back of the caravan where there was a small tent She sat on the grass. She began to take off her jeans.

She thought — Do you know how often I have to do this? Then — It's funny?

She sat with her hands round her knees, looking at the moon.

She thought — Are we not moving into the influence of some new constellation?

Eleanor came with a bowl of soup. She stood over Judith, watching her eat.

Judith said ‘Do things really work like this?'

Eleanor said ‘I think so.'

Judith said ‘What is the difference between being in the age of Pisces, and moving into the age of Aquarius?'

Eleanor said ‘The one is to do with fishes; the other is to do with the carriers of the water in which fishes swim.'

The Professor, having launched himself into space with a handkerchief round his hands and his hands round the cables at the centre of the lift-shaft, uttered a shout as if of terror as he went down: he thought — I am too old for this: I am dead: I will retire. He landed on top of the lift-cage. Jason, before him, had removed a panel in the roof. He thought — Or is it the cells in my body that require rejuvenation: the ache, the longing in my balls, heart, mind. He had to get down on his stomach to scrape through the trap-door into the lift-cage.

He groaned; made bumping noises. He thought — Thus are thunderbolts cast down: babies are born: lions walk the streets. The edge of the trap-door seemed to make a screaming noise as he went past. He thought — And so are we made bearable? unbearable? His hands and clothes were filthy. He picked at the grease, as if it were afterbirth.

He was standing in the lift-cage. There was a slight glow beyond the open door into the hallway.

Stepping out, and shaking, he thought he might appear like some old god — hairy arms, staring eyes, long top lip like a gorilla. He would go along the corridor to the door of his room; there then would be the man and the boy they would leap to their feet knocking over a bottle of whisky, a torch, a lighted candle; the shapes of them going up in flames like those from the neighbouring buildings above. In his room he found Anderson sitting at his, the Professor's, desk; he was alone; on the desk was the half bottle of whisky. The torch, on its end, shone upwards. Anderson was reading a typescript. The Professor thought — Note the especially fine modelling round the mouth, the eyes —

He said ‘Where's that fellow —'

‘Gone.'

‘Where to?'

‘I expect to get more copy.'

The Professor stretched out and took the bottle of whisky. He tipped it to his mouth, and emptied it.

He said ‘He took my whisky.'

Anderson said ‘He seemed to think you had some notes.'

The Professor took the torch and went through into the laboratory. He shone the light around glass pipes, wires, dials. He went to the tray of liquid and shone the torch in it. Then he took from a shelf above a small bottle of colourless liquid which was sealed: he shone the torch on it; he shone the torch on the seal. Then he carried the bottle back to his office, put it on the desk, and sat facing Anderson.

Anderson said ‘Why did you come down?'

The Professor said ‘Another metaphysical question!'

The room in which they were sitting had just a desk, two filing cabinets, a hatstand, a table, and two chairs. There were the torch and the two bottles on the desk There were pipes and wires along the back.

The Professor took the typescript from Anderson's hands and leafed through it briefly and then threw it into a cardboard box on the desk which contained the strips of Anderson's film.

Anderson exclaimed ‘My film!'

He went to the box and lifted out the typescript. He rearranged his strips of film delicately. Then he put back the typescript.

The Professor said ‘How can that script work —'

Anderson said ‘I don't know.'

The Professor said ‘In what way are we like genes; like chromosomes.'

Anderson said ‘Well we have to go out into the world —'

The Professor picked up the bottle of colourless liquid and turned it round in his hands.

Anderson seemed to be listening as if for a noise along the passage.

He said ‘We could always write our own stories.'

The Professor said ‘Well here's to yours!' He held the
empty bottle of whisky up, as if he would drink a toast.

Anderson said ‘Thanks.'

From along the passage, somewhere by the hallway by the lift-shaft, there was the sound of picking and clinking.

Anderson said ‘If they come in here —'

The Professor said ‘Yes?'

‘All you have to say is —'

‘I'm not saying anything —'

‘— That something terrible is happening.'

‘They won't believe me.'

‘Right. Then don't say anything.'

The Professor stared at him.

He said ‘You sound like one of his characters.'

Anderson took the bottle of colourless liquid from the Professor. He sniffed it. He said ‘Gin?'

The Professor said ‘Good heavens!'

From along the passage, past the hallway by the lift-shaft, the sound of clinking had become louder.

The Professor leaned back and put his feet up on the desk. He said ‘I thought that fellow had your girl.'

Anderson said ‘I thought he had yours.'

The Professor said ‘She isn't mine.'

Anderson said ‘Well she isn't mine either.'

Then Anderson took the torch and began to look round on the floor underneath the table.

The Professor said ‘What are you looking for?'

Anderson said ‘My film.'

The Professor said ‘Your film is in that box.'

Anderson said ‘No, the reel I was carrying. This is real. Reel! I've lost it.' Then, as if quoting'— With an air of intense anxiety—'

He went out into the passage.

The Professor said ‘So something terrible has happened?'

The Professor thought — He really does look like someone who has lost or dropped something that may blow up the world.