Black Chalk (6 page)

Jack quickly cleared his throat. ‘We had some more thoughts as well,’ he said, although this was in fact the first Jack had heard of any such game. ‘Ideas such as having to propose something highly illiberal in front of the lefty student union, having to forward a motion that could be interpreted as racist or sexist … Those are the hot-button issues that fire them up most of all. You can’t beat a good bit of lefty rage for entertainment.

‘Or you could give a lecture on Margaret Thatcher,’ Jack continued, ‘and claim that rather than her being a villain, she’s your personal heroine. You have to tell a crowd of smug liberals how vital it was to kill Argentines in the Falklands and she saved the economy by giving the nation’s miners a really good kicking.’ Jack grinned as he became more and more amused by the thought. ‘And then you lean on the lectern and watch the crowd just fucking explode like you’ve kicked over their cosy little anthill,’ he said. ‘Just imagine the liberal pandemonium. There’s not a single person in college would
ever
speak to you again.’

Now Tallest appeared interested once again. ‘Any more?’ he said, his tongue emerging speculatively from his mouth.

‘Oh,
fuckloads
,’ said Jack. ‘And it gets darker, much darker. But that’s enough to give you a taste.’

Tallest turned to his left. ‘Take down his name,’ he said.

‘No P in Thomson,’ said Jack while Middle scribbled a third line on his pad.

‘So why, may I ask, are you coming to us?’ said Tallest.

‘Funding,’ said Chad.

Game Soc’s representatives exchanged looks, then quickly and silently reached their decision. It was the first time any of them had smiled and now all three of them were smiling unanimously.

‘How does ten thousand pounds sound?’ said Tallest.

‘This is not an unconditional offer, you realise,’ said Middle.

And then Shortest added, his voice careful but nonetheless keen, ‘We would have to see a more formal proposal. A side of A4 should suffice.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Chad, ‘ten thousand pounds? You said ten thousand, right?’

‘Yes, that’s something like twenty thousand of your American dollars, Mr Mason,’ said Tallest. ‘So long as you provide us with a more detailed proposal. And so long as we approve that proposal.’

Chad tried hard not to laugh.

‘And we would have to insist upon one further important condition,’ Tallest continued. ‘At all times, and for the entire duration of the Game, at least one of the three of us would have to be present. This would remain applicable both during every round and for all consequences, where practicable. This condition couldn’t be dispensed with. We would never interfere. We would always act as nothing more than silent observers unless some fundamental breach of the rules should occur. And one last thing, we feel your proposal should concentrate to a large degree on those consequences.’

‘We like –’ Middle consulted his pad – ‘we like Mr Thomson’s initial ideas,’ he said.

‘You might want to flesh out your plans in Mr Thomson’s direction,’ said Shortest.

Tallest then fastened the buttons on his jacket. ‘We don’t hand out money to any Tom, Dick and Harry, Mr Mason. It requires something rather special. But we feel your game has potential.’

Middle took down the small Game Soc sign while Shortest removed a blank business card from the back pocket of his jeans and wrote something down. ‘This is the only number at which we can be reached. It’s a mobile phone number, so I wouldn’t waste any time trying to trace it to a college or any other establishment.’

‘Mobile phone,’ Jack snorted. ‘Fancy rich fuckers then, are you?’ The only student at Pitt who owned a mobile phone was a viscount and potential heir to one of Europe’s largest fortunes.

Tallest took the card from Shortest, reached conspicuously past Jack and handed it to Chad. ‘You have until Monday,’ he said, ‘and let’s say no later than noon. You choose the venue, just call and let us know.’ He rapped his knuckles twice on the ledge of the stall.

Chad thought he could see in Middle and Shortest’s demeanours a sense of relief, or perhaps even gratitude. Tallest nodded to his shorter colleagues and they left together, Tallest first, mother duck leading the line. Very soon only one of their heads was visible above the throng of the crowd.

*   *   *

XI(i)
   I am woken by the sun today. I must not have closed the curtains last night, distracted by the thrill of my walk, my first day of training. (Must take more walks.)

For three years, since the onset of my hermitage, I have awoken only to sounds, the same dim hydraulic hum of the garbage trucks at work every morning, the Sisyphean task of removing the trash from the city.

But today I awake to the pleasure of an exciting new discovery.

Allow me first a brief explanation, some background. My apartment is a railroad flat, to use the local parlance. The name refers simply to the fact that such apartments are long and thin. Mine consists of three slender rooms, one after the other like the coupled carriages of a train. The kitchen is located at the back, the living room at the front and the bedroom in the middle. There are doorways but no doors and windows only at each end. And while the light from outside bleeds into the kitchen and living room just a little, my bedroom forms the heart of darkness in this railroad flat.

So this morning when I awake and find, for the first time in three years, my bedroom half lit by the sun, I discover the presence of a large closet at the foot of my bed. And I feel almost as if this closet has suddenly blinked into being. Yes, of course I suppose I remembered the presence of a
large
closet at the foot of my bed. I may no longer have a wife but I am not divorced entirely from my mind. However, my curtains and blinds have remained shut for such a long time.

Furthermore I am not an enthusiastic switcher-on of lamps or overhead lights. In the bedroom there are absolutely no working light bulbs. Because what else do I do in the bedroom but sleep? In the dark! In fact, for use in the gloomiest hours, I carry around a flashlight fastened to a loop of string that allows me to hang said flashlight from my neck. And when I need it, I use it. When I don’t, I preserve its batteries. I use lamps or overhead lights only when a task requires two hands.

But I have become distracted from matters more pressing.

Yes, this morning in the lengthening sunlight, I notice a closet and the following thought occurs to me – I have not opened the closet for so long I have forgotten its contents.

I am leaving you here on the table a moment. Discovery calls out to me. I will report back immediately, I promise you.

*   *   *

XI(ii)
   A kind of hell. Nine, ten, eleven hours ago I descended into some circle of hell. That large closet is nothing but a vault in Satan’s armoury of evil.

When I slide open one of the doors and swing my flashlight’s eager eye across the closet’s contents, I find the following: Monopoly, Chutes & Ladders, Buckaroo, Chess, Guess Who?, Clue, Operation, Risk, Backgammon, Connect Four, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Electronic Battleship, Uno, Checkers, Mah-jong …

At first I feel so happy to have stumbled upon such a treasure trove. I feel like Ali Baba in a cave of riches. So many games. So much training equipment. A mental gym, no less.

First I pull out that old family favourite, Monopoly, and choose my foes, Hat and Car.

I roll first and buy buy buy. I give my imagined opponents inferior strategies and trade properties at prices advantageous to myself. But even so I lose. The dice are against me, I couldn’t buy a roll in a bakery. Such a stupid game with so much luck involved. Such a stupid fucking game that I don’t even finish. I throw the board across the room and the paper dollars into the air. I tear up the Chance and Community Chest cards so I will never, ever have to play that stupid fucking game again.

I decide next to select a game that relies less on luck. I remove Scrabble from its dog-eared box, place the board gently on my bed and sense the excitement building again in my chest. I decide to make this a game for just two. (Not stacking the odds, you understand, merely improving them.)

I always play a tight and controlled game of Scrabble. Employing this strategy for myself only, as we near the end of the game I have surged almost a hundred points ahead. My crown awaits. And then … Which part of my brain despises me so? I see my hateful opponent has the letters IERGOAG. I sneer loudly when I realise these letters form an anagram of the word GEORGIA. Such a shame, I say to my opponent, that proper nouns aren’t allowed. Maybe down in Atlanta they’d give you the points for the sake of state pride. But up here in Yankee New York, well, what can I say, old friend? Rules are rules.

My imagination idly picks up the word GEORGIA and allows its letters to swim above the board. And then … Am I really so deserving of so much misfortune? I see a floating GEORGIA winding itself around the letter P (from my superbly played PRETZEL). Yes, I look on with horror as ARPEGGIO appears. A fifty-point bingo and a double-word score to boot.

I can barely type these words I feel such rage. I hurl away the Scrabble board where it can languish in hell with Monopoly.

And how does my luck improve next?

It does not improve, that’s exactly fucking how.

I unbox Operation and prepare to cure Cavity Sam of his diseases. I try to remove the wrench from his wrenched ankle and the pail to cure his water on the knee and the butterfly from his stomach. But every time the tweezers descend toward Sam, my fingers start trembling, very soon I twitch and …

Away, rapidly away, goes Operation, Chutes & Ladders, Backgammon …

Finally fate intervenes to save me. The batteries in my flashlight fail halfway through a woeful game of Buckaroo. Darkness has fallen outside, it transpires, so I jump off the bed and run into the living room intending to turn on the lamp. But something hits my toe and a split second later I hear the sound of breaking glass and feel a stabbing pain in the sole of my foot. I hop across the room and fumble for the lamp. When finally my fingers find the light switch, I see in the middle of the floor four empty glasses and the icy slick of a single broken glass. Blood is seeping from my foot.

I hop back to the bedroom and begin fumbling around for the game Operation. When finally I find it I return to the lamplight of the living room where I use my teeth to gnaw away the tweezers attached to the board. I grimace and then proceed to tweeze a large shard of glass from my foot. Due to my shaky hands, the procedure proves rather difficult and takes some considerable time.

And then with a great sense of relief, my foot hurting like hell, I remember my painkillers. I hop on my good foot into the kitchen where I see all my mnemonics untouched and in place. So it seems I have achieved nothing today. No water, no food, nothing at all. (Perhaps this explains the shaky hands.) I snatch up a pill but hesitate to pop it in my mouth, staring at this little blue caplet as if there is something wrong. And then I shake my head briskly, my mind cloudy, my foot stinging and throbbing. Quickly my painkillers become the first achievement of the day. And thus, soothed by my meds, I lie on the bed and close my eyes, holding my sore foot and thinking of all those losses. Thinking that, after HELL ONE, this day of defeat is a second poor omen. I have to be better than this. I must grow stronger.

*   *   *

XII(i)
   They spoke of nothing but Game Soc all the way back to Pitt. When they passed through the lodge they saw Mark wandering down one side of front quad, yawning and wearing socks but no shoes. He had on a pair of headphones plugged into a Walkman that was clipped to his belt. When they approached him he pushed off the headphones and let them hang from his neck.

‘Mark, there’s no tape in your Walkman,’ said Jolyon, pointing.

‘Oh dear,’ said Mark, ‘is it that obvious?’

‘And the play button isn’t pushed down either,’ said Jack.

‘It’s worked so far though,’ said Mark.

‘What are you doing awake so early, anyway?’ said Jolyon.

‘Can’t sleep,’ said Mark. ‘I thought a walk might help. But there are some people round here I’m not so desperate to talk to.’ He unclipped the Walkman and waggled it.

‘Would a Hemingway daiquiri help more?’

Mark blinked serenely in the sunlight. ‘Indubitably,’ he said.

*   *   *

XII(ii)
   Mark was the cleverest person at Pitt, Jolyon had told Chad. Chad wasn’t sure how Jolyon had judged this. Jolyon said the cleverest people were never aware of their genius but Mark seemed barely aware of anything. Always groggy, a voracious sleeper.

Jolyon had taken Chad on a mission of mercy one evening to awaken Mark so he wouldn’t miss dinner a third night in a row. They eventually roused him, Jolyon having to resort to stealing his covers. Mark had been sleeping for sixteen hours straight.

He then yawned his way through dinner and subsequently drinks in the bar. In Jolyon’s room that night he had catnapped between hash tokes and sips of gin rickey. Mark’s lips made small murmurous movements while he napped. Perhaps, thought Chad, he was reciting equations, formulating new theories in his sleep. Mark studied physics. And like all of them in their circle, his area of study came in some ways to define Mark in the collective thoughts of his friends. Physicist, genius, mad scientist.

His hair stood in vertical coils, the effect somewhere between untamed bush and bedsprings. And he had a nose ill-suited to lethargy, it being pronouncedly aquiline. Whenever Mark’s eyes began to droop, his gaze would drift down the slope of his nose and settle for a moment on its tip. And finally, with a gentle flutter, the eyelids would shut.

*   *   *

XII(iii)
   In his room Jolyon apologised for false advertising, he blamed his poor memory. It was not the right day for Hemingway daiquiris, the ingredients for Singapore slings were already arranged on the coffee table.

Chad listened in awe as Jolyon then discussed physics with Mark. Although Jolyon was studying law at Pitt, his knowledge encompassed everyone’s choice of subject. Chad had heard him talk often to literature students about numerous obscure novels, which Jolyon always appeared to have read more of than they. He spoke knowledgeably with PPE students about politics, philosophy and economics. He chatted breezily with chemistry students about Mendeleev and the aesthetics of the periodic table. No topic seemed beyond him.