The Condition of Muzak

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.

—Pater

As Major Nye tried to brush some green and brown stains from the collar of his tropical combat jacket a little damp earth fell from his neck and struck the fused stone of the timeless causeway. Around him what remained of the ruins of Angkor merged with the blackened boles of a defoliated jungle; the area was at peace; it had ceased to be of strategic importance. About fifty feet away a huge stone head of Ganesh, elephant god of trade and good luck, lay on its side where a 105mm shell had shot it between the eyes, blasting a deep gash in the stone above the base of its trunk: the wound glinted white and crystalline against the surrounding mossy grey of the forehead; the god seemed to have acquired a disenchanted third orb. Though a few monkeys and parrots (no longer the rowdy insouciants of more glorious pre-war years) crept about in the higher terraces, pausing cautiously if they disturbed a fragment of plaster or dislodged a twig, there were few sounds of life in the city.

Major Nye had at first found the city peaceful but he was becoming increasingly uneasy with the tensions which had gone to produce that peace. He lifted his head towards his right as, from the twisted and fire-blasted turret of a wrecked tank, a poor copy of a Vickers Mark I Main Battle (the ‘Shiva’), emerged the chubby khaki bottom of a small Brahmin. Behind the tank the jungle brooded. “It’s no go, I’m afraid, major.” The Brahmin wiped fat hands on his oily fatigues and wriggled round so that he could face Nye. “Not a scrap.” He flourished an empty picnic hamper.

This was the Shiva which had scored the hit on Ganesh: its occupant was the only survivor of retaliatory rocket-fire which had, in turn, taken out the tank. He called himself “Hythloday” but Nye knew his real name. ‘Hythloday’ had been a technical advisor with the Indian mercenary mechanised cavalry in its now famous sweep from Darjeeling to Saigon. Some months earlier, having no room for passengers, the cavalry had left him behind with his broken tank, and two days ago Major Nye, making a routine search-and-destroy operation in the area on behalf of his Khmer employers, had found him, recognising him as a former acquaintance. Major Nye had not reported his capture—there would have been little point, for yesterday he had intercepted a radio report: Phnôm Penh had sustained a tactical nuclear strike, possibly Tasmanian in origin. Without question it was curtains for the Khmers.

Unemployed again, bereft of the loyalties he needed so badly, Major Nye stroked his ancient tash and drew grey brows together. His pale hair, thin and sandy, his pale blue eyes, stood out in contrast to the heavy tan on his near fleshless face and neck. “Ah, well,” he said in answer to Hythloday’s statement, “there are always the emergency rations. I must say the world is not the one I knew as a boy.” He lowered his Armbrust 300 anti-tank weapon to the ground and unpacked the box at his belt. “Still, peace has been restored and that’s important. Though at a price, of course.”

From behind a crackling mass of fried foliage a third figure climbed up the masonry and sat beside him on the slab: a young man in tatty out-of-date clothing, haunted and demoralised by something more than war. The major offered him a strip of pemmican. “You seem cold, old chap. Are you sure you haven’t picked up a spot of fever?”

“It depends what you mean, major.” Jerry Cornelius turned the ragged collar of his black car coat so that it framed his face. He accepted the dehydrated meat and raised it reluctantly to his lips. His eyes were hot, his skin flushed. He was shivering.

Professor Hira joined them. “You’ve had the last of the medical kit, I regret to say, Mr Cornelius.”

Cornelius had revealed himself to them on the previous day. From what he had told them he seemed to have been hiding in the ruins for a long time, since well before the final battle. Today he was, physically, slightly better than when they had found him, though he continued to deny that there was anything wrong with him. He had accepted the morphine, he said, because he hated to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Similarly the quinine, the penicillin and the valium. There was at least a score of recent holes in his forearms.

“It’s industrialisation I need.” Jerry shifted himself so that he squatted at Major Nye’s feet. “I’ve developed this horrible antipathy towards peasant communities. Particularly Slavs and South-East Asians. What makes them so cruel?”

“It’s hard to sympathise, isn’t it?” Professor Hira nodded his head. “Original sin, I suspect. The devil come to Eden. It can’t be the climate or the terrain.” He had decided to skip the jerky and was gnawing, instead, on a root. “It can’t be poverty.”

“The very opposite, in my view,” said Major Nye. “The richest New Guinea tribes were always the nastiest. Don’t Kiev and Bangkok have a great deal in common with Crawley or Brighton?”

“Or Skokie,” said Professor Hira with a certain amount of feeling.

They looked at him in surprise. He shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

Major Nye carefully packed up the rest of the rations. “I wouldn’t mind getting back to Blighty myself. Better the devil you know, eh? A return to reality.”

“Oh, Christ.” Jerry began to shiver again. He rose. “That’s the last thing I need.”