The Western Lands (7 page)

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating, disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

This procedure is based on scientific evidence: Poetzel's Law states that dream imagery excludes conscious perception in favor of preconscious perceptions. And Freud's hypothesis that the neutral character of preconscious perception permits it to serve as a cover for material that would not otherwise escape the dream censor, so that unpleasant affect is attracted to preconscious perception. There is, in fact, a fifty-seven percent correlation between preconscious recall and peak unpleasantness. Charles Fischer says that dreams have a tendency to take up the
unimportant
details of waking life.

There are other tricks: the use of generalities like "the man in the street" and the editorial "we" to establish a rapport of disapproval with the reader and at the same time to create a mental lacuna under cover of an insubstantial and unspecified "we." And the technique of the misunderstood word: pack a review with obscure words that send the reader to the dictionary. Soon the reader will feel a vague, slightly queasy revulsion for whatever is under discussion.

Julian Chandler, book reviewer for a prestigious New York daily, knows all the tricks. He has chosen for his professional rancor the so-called Beat Movement, and perfected the art of antiwriting. Writers use words to evoke images. He uses words to obscure and destroy images.

This afternoon he has delivered his latest review to the office and made an appointment with the editor for three o'clock. Reading over a copy of the review, he feels a comfortable, cool-blue glow. A perfect job of demolition, and he knows it. And the editor will know it too. Two columns and not one visual image . . . word, pure word. The effect is depressing and disquieting, gathering to itself a muttering chorus of negation and antagonism.

"One starts on a mesa, a jump ahead of the posse, and soon finds oneself in the highlands of Yemen a hundred years later in quest of the Yacks, mysterious monkeys who have sex by rubbing larynxes, and this gives rise to a terrible (ho hum) plague. When the plague dies down one is back in the Old West, having lost track of time in a labyrinth of irrelevant incidents . . . like Theseus leaving a thread lest he be bored to death by the terrible Minotaur, and so finds his way back to the feeble and pointless ending . . . The sky darkened and went out.' Not nearly soon enough, was the feeling of this reviewer. Occasionally one glimpses flashes from the man who long ago wrote
Naked Lunch
,
to show that he is not totally dead but simply sleeping, and putting his readers to sleep."

A sudden silence that can happen in big cities . . . traffic sounds cut off, a pause, a hiatus, and at the same moment the feeling that someone is at the door. This should not happen unannounced—that is what he is paying $3,500 a month for.

He steps to the peephole. The hall is empty down to the elevator. He slides the deadbolt and opens the door. A small black dog slithers in without a sound, its brush against his leg light as wind. He snatches a heavy cane he keeps by the door.

"Get out of here!"

But the dog is nowhere to be seen.

"It's gotten under something," he decides. But moving furniture and checking with a flashlight brings no dog to light.

"Well, it slipped out."

The following morning he complains to the doorman.

"A
dog
,
sir?"

Clearly the Irish doorman resents the implication that he would allow an unauthorized dog to slink into the building. After all, he is the
doorman.

"Yes, a small, black dog."

"A small, black dog, sir?" (Just a slight emphasis on
small
and
black.
)

Julian Chandler was short and slender. His family came from Trinidad, and he was inclined to boast of his black blood. This is outrageous insolence, but the doorman's face is impeccably bland, as he turns to smile at another tenant.

"Ah, good evening, Doctor Greenfield."

"Good evening, Grady."

Doctor Greenfield is an elderly WASP, trim despite his sixty years, with a pink complexion and a white mustache.

Suddenly the critic feels his carefully tended WASP connections falling about his feet like toilet paper. He considers sending a letter to the management to complain of the doorman's discourtesy, and decides against it. After all, a strange dog that comes into one's apartment, and then disappears—

"
Disappeared,
did it? Sniffed it up, more likely."

Arriving at his usual restaurant, Chandler sees the maître d' at the far end of the room seating a party, so he moves slowly toward his customary table. The maître d' turns and starts toward him with his practiced smile, which suddenly fades.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Chandler, but we do not permit pets in the dining room."

"Pets? What do you mean?"

"The dog that followed you in, sir."

"But I have no dog."

"I saw it distinctly, sir. A small black dog."

"Came in from the street most likely. It certainly isn't mine."

The maître d' looks unconvinced. . . . "Hummm, must be under something."

He calls a waiter, who peers resentfully under the table. "Nothing there . . ."

The sole isn't up to standard, and the critic's lunch is spoiled.

Chandler arrives at the office a little after three.

"Go right in, Mr. Allerton is expecting you."

New girl can't even get the editor's name right. He knocks lightly and steps in.

To his confusion a stranger comes out from behind the desk to shake hands, a youngish man with blond hair and brown eyes, who seems to float a few inches off the floor and then floats back to his seat.

"Shocking about Karl, isn't it?"

"What? I didn't know."

"Complete nervous breakdown."

"When did this happen?"

"Yesterday afternoon . . . became violent I understand . . . thought he was being followed by a black dog."

Chandler was profoundly shaken. Karl had always been known for his icy reserve.

"Where is he? We were close friends, you understand."

The new editor shrugged.

"Upstate somewhere, I believe." He leafed through some proofs on his desk. "Mr. Chandler . . . this review of W. S. Hall's latest book . . . you say categorically that it is a poor novel but you don't say why."

"But . . ." My God, didn't this punk know
anything?

"But?" The young man raised a pencil-thin eyebrow inquiringly.

"Well . . . I
understood
.
. ." Why, his orders had been crystal clear: trash it all the way.

"You understood?"

"I understood that an unfavorable review was indicated."

"Indicated?
We are trying to maintain standards of impartial appraisal. After all, this is what criticism is all about. I suggest that you submit a rewrite for
consideration.
"

Short Eyes, known as See, and the House Dick, known as Prick, are unofficial operatives of Special Operations. Prick is a burly ex-policeman with a cop's florid face and a cop's mean, angry eyes. They are rarely used against enemy agents, but rather against civilian targets: writers, artists, filmmakers, intellectuals, inventors and researchers who are considered a danger to Big Picture.

Big Picture involves escape from the planet by a chosen few. The jumping-off place is Wellington, New Zealand. After that, an extermination program will be activated. Needless to say, Big Picture is a highly sensitive project. Even to suspect the existence of Big Picture is unwholesome. As the poet says: "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"

Both operatives are trained in unarmed defense in the rather unlikely contingency of counterattack. Usually the target is too overwhelmed to consider immediate physical retaliation. And the attack occurs when the target is at his most vulnerable. The operatives have an unerring instinct for choosing the right time.

See is a more intricate artifact than Prick, an experiment in the creation of artificial character, computer-made for the target. He is the diametric opposite of the target in every way. In appearance he is completely undistinguished: not handsome, not ugly, not tall, not short, dark hair, gray eyes, thick ankles, and equipped with a dumpy, doughy, stupid wife.

The target has attended a literary conference in Harrowgate. It was a disaster. Fear seemed to blanket the hotel, the stunted garden behind the hotel, the conference hall. Holding the microphone, he found his hand shaking.

The first train back to London is jammed, and the writer takes a first-class seat. Every seat in his compartment is taken. Sitting opposite him is a youngish man, reading
Officers and Gentlemen
.
As the train pulls into Victoria Station, the man looks at him, eyes contracted in spitting hate like a poison toad. The writer drops his box of matches. Later he glimpses the same man at the head of a long taxi line. The hate and loathing in See's eyes is designed to key in all the worst moments of the target.

Prick is drinking heavily and putting on weight. Big Picture is moving into its final phase as they take over presidents, prime ministers, cabinet members and intelligence agencies. The few dissenting voices are no longer considered important. Prick finds his services less and less required. He is in fact a source of potential embarrassment to the department. Twice they have bailed him out of jail for assault and disorderly conduct charges.

"Next time you're on your own."

Feeling in need of a quick drink, he stops into a pub at World's End. There are two men halfway down the bar and a pub bulldog curled on the floor behind them. The bartender is wiping the bar. Prick is about to call the bartender and give his order, when the dog looks at him and growls. Its lips curl back from yellow fangs and the hair on its back stands up.

"What's wrong with your dog?"

"Nothing." The bartender goes on mopping his bar. "He just don't like those kind of noises."

"What noises?"

"The noises you were making."

"But . . ." The two men turn and regard him with stony disapproval. They are obvious hard cases. "Bloody Hell . . . you're crazy!" he says and walks out quickly.

It is then he notices that a small gray dog is following him. He whirls and kicks. The dog moves behind him. He tries several times but the dog is always behind him no matter how quickly he turns.

The dog soon becomes an obsession. It will follow him for several blocks and then disappear. At length he buys a heavy blackthorn cane. For several days the dog is absent. Then, as he is walking down Old Brompton Road, where the Empress Hotel used to be, the dog is once again at his heels: a small gray dog with a strange, fishy odor. At the corner of Old Brompton and North End Road he whirls, sweeping the cane behind him. The cane encounters empty air. Prick stumbles and falls into the path of a laundry truck.

Prick's accidental death is small item on the back page. See reads it and he doesn't like it. He is a methodical man with a photographic memory. He rents a typewriter and chronicles a detailed account of the contracts he has fulfilled for British military intelligence: "I Was a Professional Evil Eye for MI-5." He deposits the envelope with a solicitor, to be dispatched to
The News of the World
,
People
,
and the more conservative media, including the
London
Times
,
in the event of his demise, by accident or otherwise.

In MI-5 there are raised eyebrows. "I think Prick got drunk and fell in front of a car, period. And good riddance."

"Good riddance to be sure, but . . ."

Same office, five days later:

"See's got the wind up, threatening to go to the media. Wants money and a new identity in America."

"He should live so long."

The operative drops an envelope on the table. "That's the original, from his solicitor's safe. What we substituted is insane, paranoid ravings."

"Ah, very good. I think Henry can handle it."

See is having a beer at a corner table in a pub on North End Road.

"Who are you fucking staring at?" Four skinheads with bovver boots ranged along the bar.

"Look, I wasn't staring."

The boy contracts his eyes into a grimace of hate. 

"You wasn't
staring?
"
They spread out, moving forward.

See regained consciousness in the emergency room.

"You took quite a beating. Nothing broken, luckily. However, there may be a delayed concussion. We'd advise you to stay in the hospital forty-eight hours at least."

"No. I'm all right."

The intern shrugged.

A brown dog followed See out of the hospital. He couldn't shake it. It was, he decided, a tracking device. They are trying to find out where the envelope is. Well, he isn't such a fool as to go to his solicitor's office.

Arriving at his bed-sitting room, he opened the street door and shut it quickly. But when he opened the door of his room, the dog slid in ahead of him. He made a grab for it, and needle-sharp teeth slashed his hand.

"Bloody Hell." He bolted the door.
"Now
I've got the son of a bitch."

He went to the desk and took a .22 semiauto with a silencer from a hidden compartment. He started looking under chairs, poking in closets, his hand dripping blood.

"Must be in the bathroom." He looked behind the bathroom door, glanced into the mirror. It was all over in a few seconds.

A Spec Ops agent talks to the Medical Examiner: "Anything unusual about this one?"

"Hmmm, yes, several things. First, location of the wound, in the middle of the forehead . . . an awkward angle. Evidently he was standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Usual place is the temple, or, for those in the know, up through the roof of the mouth. Police call it 'eating the gun' or 'smoking it.' And the wounds on his hand, like a barracuda's bite."