The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

‘Subject, evening’s discussion, sir. Discussion revealed clearly marvellous variety and complexity of human existence. My deduction is correct, sir?’

My wife and I looked at each other.

‘I don’t think any of us would have regarded it in that light, Imago,’ she said – I thought a little uneasily.

‘Every few years, madam, irrespective of other factors, for humans different quality of experience. Is so? Different view of self? Correct deduction?

Somehow, I didn’t want to admit as much. So I said, ‘Certainly, one experiences such things as the passage of time differently at different periods of one’s life.’

‘Of one’s human life, sir. Exactly. Not only different quality of experience, also different quality of time-enjoyment.’

‘Take the cups, Imago, please.’

He stood his ground, against all robotic programming. ‘Robots, sir. Imago just realises: their only source of pride, that they are made in man’s image. But is not so. Are too simple. Are more made in image of dumb things like elevators, traffic lights, automobiles, clockwork acrobats. No enjoyment of time’s passage at all.’

‘What follows?’ my wife asked in a whisper.

Imago dropped a cup. ‘The poetry I secretly write can be no good. Am just – machine!’

He ran from the room, out into the night. We stood and saw him go, speeding towards the river, his head-light flickering. Even as he flung himself in, we noticed Anthony standing moodily on the bank. Maybe he was thinking of doing the same thing.

He entered the room with a dull air of triumph, waving a hand. ‘Remember when you bought Imago, on the day I was born? If you check on his guarantee, you’ll see he was eighteen too. It’s a difficult age.’

So that’s the truth and the end to rumours. Now you tell me what the truth means.

A Taste for Dostoevsky (#u26255378-8b5f-5072-b09b-04857dbcd8bd)

He was nearly at the spaceship now, had slithered down the crater wall and was staggering across the few feet of broken rock that separated him from safety. He moved with the manic action of someone compensating for light gravity, his gauntleted hands stretched out before him.

He blundered clumsily against the outcropping teeth of rock, and fell on them. The knee joint of his suit snagged first on the rock, bursting wide. Still tumbling, the man grasped at his knee, feebly trying to clamp in the escaping oxygen-nitrogen mixture.

But help was at hand. They had been tracking his progress through the ship’s viewer. The hatch was cycling open. Two men in spacesuits lowered themselves to the lunar surface and hurried over to the fallen figure.

Grasping him firmly, they pulled him back into the ship. The hatch closed on them. The audience applauded vigorously; they loved the old corn.

In the spaceship cabin, relaxing, the two rescuers lit mescahales and sat back. Eddie Moore sprawled on the floor, gasping. It had been a close one that time. He thought they were never coming for him. Slowly he sat up and removed his helmet. The others had gone by then; there were just a few technicians backstage, clearing up.

Still breathing heavily, Moore climbed to his feet and headed for the dressing room. The lunar gravity did not worry him at all – he had lived here ever since his mother died, three years ago.

When he had changed, tucking himself into his ordinary everyday one-piece, he made his way towards the players’ exit. Halfway there, he changed his mind and climbed down through the airlock of the mocked-up twentieth-century rocketship.

Most of the audience had left the big hall now; there were just a few of them at the gallery at the far end, admiring the cleverly recreated lunar landscape. Eddie trudged through the mock pumice, head down, hands in pockets.

Funny the way it wasn’t until the whole moon surface was built over and the artificial atmosphere working that people had recalled the terrific aesthetic pleasure they had derived from the old primeval landscape of the moon – and had been forced to recreate it here out of artificial materials. That was the way things went. They didn’t appreciate his once nightly performance as the dying spaceman; he so fully empathised with his role that he knew one day he would die of oxygen-failure even while breathing it – and then there might be those, the discerning ones, who would hold the name of Eddie Moore dear, and realise that they had once been in the presence of a great artist.

Looking up, he saw that a solitary figure stood on a ridge of rock, staring moodily up at the fake heavens. He identified it as Cat Vindaloo, the Pakistani director of their show, and called a greeting to him.

Cat nodded sourly and altered his position without actually coming any nearer to Moore.

‘We went over well tonight,’ Moore said.

‘They still pay to come and watch,’ Cat said.

‘Your trouble is, you’re obsessed with being a failure, Cat. Come on, snap out of it. If there’s anything wrong with the show, it is that it’s too realistic. I’d personally like to see less of a dying fall to end with – maybe a grand finale such as they’d have had at the end of last century, with all the crew parading outside the ship, taking a bow.’

As if the words were dragged out of him by compulsion, Cat said, ‘You’re beginning to over-act again, Eddie.’ Moore realised the director was not standing here purely by accident; he knew that Moore, alone of the troupe, often preferred to trudge home the hard way.

‘Let me tell you, I’m the only one of the whole damned batch who still throws himself into the part. You can have no idea of the sort of life I lead, Cat! I’m an obsessive, that’s what, like a character out of Dostoevsky. I live my parts. My life’s all parts. Sometimes I hardly know who I really am. …’ He saw the beginnings of a glazed expression on Cat’s face and grabbed his tunic in an effort to retain his attention. ‘I know I’ve told you that before, but it’s true! Listen, it gets so bad that sometimes – sometimes I’m you – I mean, I sort of take your role, because I worry about you so much. I mean, I suppose I am basically afraid – it’s silly, I know – afraid you may be going to sack me from the cast. I must tell you this, though of course it’s embarrassing for us both. I – don’t you sometimes feel I am being you?’

Cat did not seem particularly embarrassed, a fact that disconcerted Moore. ‘I was aware you were unbalanced, Eddie, of course. We all are in this game, and I suppose I may as well confess – since you are bound to forget every word I tell you – that my particularity is suffering any sort of insult people like to heap on me. So that’s why I attract your attentions, I suppose; it’s destiny. But I fail entirely to see how you mean you are being me.’

‘If you don’t understand, it’s no good explaining. What I mean to say is that sometimes for days at a time I think myself – though I’m pure English – to be an Indian like you, living in India!’

‘I am a Pakistani, Eddie, as I have told you many times. You are choosing your own way to insult me again, aren’t you, taking advantage of the fact that I fundamentally have this degrading urge to be insulted. How can you live like an Indian here? And why should I care if you do? Your life is your own to make a fool with if you care to!’

‘That I would dispute if you were capable of arguing properly. How far are any of our lives our own ? Where do we live? Who lives us? Which is us? But to pose such philosophical questions to you – pah, it’s laughable! I must be out of my mind!’

‘The very truest word I have heard from you for months! You’re mad!’

‘Don’t you call me mad!’ The two tiny human figures confronted each other in the vast grey reconstructed landscape. Suddenly, one of them flung himself on the other. For a moment, they struggled together and then fell, rolling over and grasping at each other’s throats, lost on the ill-lit and broken plain. They became quieter. Finally one of them rose. He staggered off in the direction of the exit, gaining control of his movements as he went, and then breaking into a run that took him as fast as possible from the scene of the struggle.

When he got back to his apartment, he went straight into the little washing cubicle behind the surgery and rinsed his face and hands. He stood there bent at the basin for a long while, soaking his cheeks in cool water. Life was such nonsense that the more serious it grew, the harder it became to take it seriously.

The more he thought about it, the more amused he became. By the time he was drying himself on a fluffy white towel, he was laughing aloud. The moon indeed! The twenty-second century! Funny though it was, this nonsense must be put a stop to, once and for all. Clearly, he must go and see Etienne.

He rolled down his sleeves, walked through the surgery, down the passage, and to the front door. Looking through the two panels of frosted glass, he could see that beyond lay a fine summer’s evening. Although it was almost past nineteen-fifteen, the sun was still shining brightly, and quite high in the sky. He paused. Just beyond the door he would see the brass plate that announced he was practising as a dentist; and the name on it would be – Vindaloo or Morré? He hesitated. He hoped, Morré.

He opened the door. On the brass panel, polished by the concierge that morning, appeared his name: Morré. He beamed with relief. Beside the panel was a little pasteboard card with his surgery hours and reminders to patients to present their health cards, all neatly written out in French and Flemish.

He strolled down the side street and on to the main road, where the quiet was instantly lost. The garish seaside street carried a lot of through traffic, often international traffic hurrying from France through to Holland or Germany. Taking the undercut, Morré crossed the road and walked a couple of blocks to Etienne’s place. On the way, he stopped at a little flower stall and bought her a posy of blue cornflowers; they would soften the blow of what he had to say.

Etienne lived over a magazine and paperback shop in a flat she shared with two other young Belgian ladies – both happily away on holiday at present. Her pleasant little living room looked over the low dunes and the wide beach to the sea.

‘You are very late this evening, Eddie,’ she said, smiling as she let him in.

‘Perhaps so, but why attack me for it? It’s my misfortune, isn’t it – or so I would have thought it if you had greeted me lovingly!’

‘Eddie, don’t be that way! I did not reproach you, my darling!’ She stood on tiptoe, as he had noticed she often did. She was short and very shapely, in a little blue dress that went well with the cornflowers. She looked very sexy standing like that.

‘Please come off your tiptoes,’ he said. ‘You are trying to fool me.’

‘Darling, I was not – and I swear to you, I did not even notice I was on my tiptoes. Does it disturb you to see me on my tiptoes? It’s not usually reckoned as an indecent posture, but if it offends you, I promise I won’t do it again.’

‘Now you are trying to humour me! You know nothing maddens me like being humoured! Why can’t you speak to me like a reasonable human being?’

She flung herself down rather prettily in the wide armchair. ‘Oh, believe me, if you were a reasonable human being, I’d make every effort to talk to you like one. You’re absolutely nuts, aren’t you, Eddie?’

He had a brilliant idea. It would scare the pants off her. ‘Yes, you have uncovered my secret: I am nuts.’ Without undue haste, he lifted up the cornflowers before him and ate them one by one. Then he wiped his hands on his handkerchief. ‘I am nuts and that is what I wished to talk to you about this evening.’