Absolute Zero Cool (16 page)

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.’