The Condition of Muzak (22 page)

Apart from the infrequent fights which would break out amongst the birds, there were very few sounds to disturb him these days as he renounced his camp-bed and lay deep in his bushes, his back to moist earth, his earphones almost invariably on his head as he listened to the Pure Prairie League, The Chieftains and, believing that this kept him in touch with the world, Roy Harper. He was inclined not to notice when his batteries had run down and the records were playing sometimes at less than half speed. He was also inclined to fall asleep when the needle stuck in a groove and not wake for two or three days.

He was dimly aware that these long periods of sleeping were increasing but, since he felt no physical effects, he preferred not to worry about them. It was likely that his activities through the past couple of decades had exhausted him more than he knew. For the moment, too, he had even forgotten about his sister, who lay in her padded silk coffin in the freezer, perhaps dreaming of an even more remote past than the one he sought to create for himself.

The summer grew hotter; the jungle grew denser, and then one day, as Jerry slumbered in musty heat in a little tunnel he had made for himself in the foliage, an unread copy of
Union Jack
for 21 September, 1923 (‘X-ine or The Case of the Green Crystals’, A Zenith Story) lying foxed and damp-stained by his limp right hand, the comforting rumble of Centurion Thirteens, Vickers Vijayantas and Humber FV1611 armoured personnel carriers augmented the sultry tranquillity of the day, the hum of bees, the hiccuping of crickets.

The little fleet of armour came to a stop at the signal of a round-shouldered old man in the dress uniform of a major in the Royal Hussars who emerged from the leading Humber, adjusting his busby. A captain, in conventional khaki, pushed up the hatch of the Centurion immediately behind the Humber and ran over the weedy tarmac to receive orders. The major spoke a few words, contemplated the outside of the store which was almost entirely covered by thick ivy, checked the dark green interior of the main hallway, then returned to his personnel carrier. A head wearing a green, gold and purple turban raised itself over the camouflaged metal. A chubby brown face showed a certain amount of astonishment as it caught sight of the department store, which somehow had come to resemble the forgotten ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Green and gold shoulders followed the face and eventually the whole figure, small and stocky and round, stood on the surface of the vehicle, hands on hips. He was dressed in the impressive uniform of the 30th Deccan Horse, a broad sash around his waist, his sabre and pistol supported on a Sam Browne belt which was oddly functional compared to the rest of the ensemble. The major saluted and lifted a hand to help the splendid Indian to the ground then, together, they entered the forest.

The engines of the tanks and personnel carriers were switched off; silence returned. Slowly the crews began to climb from their machines and, stripped to the waist, smoke cigarettes and chat amongst themselves. They seemed to be a mixed force in a variety of uniforms—English, Scottish, Indian, Trinidadian, Jamaican and Cornish among them. Tinny Heavy Reggae began to sound from at least one turret.

The two officers reached the roof garden three hours later. They were sweating and stained, the collars of their jackets opened, their headgear askew. They searched the restaurant and the restaurant kitchens. The first thing they found was the display freezer with its pale blue contents, the beautiful smiling madonna. The major shook his head. “About the only thing he ever thought worth preserving. Poor little chap.”

“They were in love,” said the Indian. He tried to push his hand down the side of the coffin to get a tub of Honey and Acacia ice-cream below, but failed.

“More than that.” The major sighed. “She represented everything he thought important. He believed that if he could revive her he could revive the world he had lost.”

“She is dead, then?”

“As good as, old boy.” The major closed the lid of the cabinet. “We’d better check the garden now. You take the Tudor and I’ll take the Spanish. If you don’t have any luck, meet me back here.”

They went their ways.

The major found it almost impossible to climb over the tangled branches and roots blocking the entrance to the mock Moorish splendours of the garden where the fountains were now choked with dark green vegetation, with magnolia, oversized tulips, peonies, poppies, sunflowers. The heavy scent from the place almost drove him back. He was about to press on when his ear detected a faint sound from his right and he looked towards the gigantic rhododendron mass immediately opposite the restaurant. Two or three flamingoes stalked from it, their pink necks wobbling, splashing on broad feet through what remained of the miniature river. But it was not the birds who had made the sound. The major moved towards the rhododendron, almost blinded by the intensity of the purple, scarlet and pink blossoms, the powerful odour of earth and decaying undergrowth. He pushed branches aside and found a low archway. He bent down and peered through the green semi-darkness. He went on his knees and began to crawl until the tunnel opened into a tiny cavern in which lay curled, foetuslike, the body of the man the major had sought over five continents.

The body was dressed in a green-and-khaki camouflaged safari suit, there were black Koss earphones on his head and the lead of the earphones was attached to a record deck on which Al Bowlly was singing ‘What a Little Moonlight Can Do’ with painful slowness. On its side, near the player, was a clock, decorated in red, white and blue, and beside it a gesticulating figurine in a traditional white Pierrot costume with a black skull-cap, perhaps a contemporary likeness of Charles Debureau himself; near that a copy of a Fantômas novelette and a copy of
Le Chat Noir
magazine. The
Union Jack
was open at the beginning of the story. A box below the illustration, showing an open safe, a swirl of vapour and two men apparently confronting one another (one wearing full evening dress) read:
This story very worthily upholds the UNION JACK tradition—the tradition for really well-told stories, full of character and action. It is a Zenith-Sexton Blake story, written as only the creator of the Albino knows how. If you want anything better than this you are indeed hard to please
. The major carefully picked the fragile magazine from the earth, rolled it and tucked it into the top pocket of his dark blue tunic. Then he inspected the stiff figure of the man. It was thin. The face was quite long, the lips full, the eyes, though closed, apparently large. The hair was black, long and fine, but appeared to have been dyed white at some time. There was a very close resemblance to the blonde young woman the major had discovered in the freezer. He lifted his head:

“In here, Hythloday. I’ve found him, poor old chap. Just made it, too, it seems. He’s almost gone.”

The major waited, rolling himself a cigarette as he looked down at the curled figure. There came a blundering sound from behind him and eventually a panting Hythloday crawled into view. There was not really room for all three of them. It was obvious that Hythloday at first suspected the major had been forced to defend himself.

“He’s not dead, I hope. Was he violent?”

“Oh, no, no.” The major smiled sadly. “As far as this chap’s concerned I’m afraid violence is a thing of the past.”

“Ten bloody years!” Miss Brunner was incongruous in a red-and-white Malay sarong, her head tied in the kind of blue turban hat popular four decades earlier. Her breath smelled of chloroform from the Victory V throat lozenges she had taken to consuming. In wedge sandals she hobbled across a green, blue and gold Kazhak carpet to the mock Adam fireplace where old Major Nye stood looking at a collection of photographs in black and silver Mackintosh frames. Major Nye wore the uniform of his first regiment: a pale blue and yellow tunic, dark blue britches with a double yellow stripe, black riding boots with spurs, a sabre, white spiked helmet; the 8th King George’s Own Light Cavalry. He had become so frail that it seemed the uniform alone kept him on his feet. He turned, blinking mildly, raising a grey eyebrow, bending his thin good ear towards her. “Eh?”

“I don’t think you realise how very difficult it’s been for some of us.” She stared coldly at one of the marble pillars near the tall double doors. Ceramic Siamese red and black lions returned her gaze. The whole place was a mixture of oriental styles except for the original architecture, which was Victorian Greek. “I spent nine months in a Cornish internment camp for a start!”

“Start?”

“Underground bunkers. They put anything under ground that will go under ground. They’re fond of holes, the Cornish. They’re afraid of the sun.”

“Ironical, in their case. They’re like the Welsh. Mining, you see. They love it. Like the Seven Dwarves.
Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go
…” He chuckled.
Dig, dig, dig
. It’s made them very rich these days, I gather. Tin, clay, gold and silver even. Oh, they’ve done it for centuries. Since before the Romans. Two thousand years at least. Give them a pick and shovel and they’ll burrow through anything. It’s instinctive. You have to admire them.”

She had heard his racial views more than once. She sighed deeply. “Oh, yes?” She rubbed at her raw bare arm. “They’re also notoriously horrible to their prisoners—including the other Celts.”

“True. You heard that stuff about the flint knives, I suppose, and the menhirs?”

“I saw it,” she said. “I was lucky.”

“Well, they’ve achieved their object. They don’t get many unwanted visitors any more. They’ve a new arethyor enthroned at Tintagel at last. I got the news this morning.”

“Which one won?”

“Arluth St Aubyn, naturally.” He shrugged and rubbed at his blue-veined nose. “They can’t help themselves. Ancient instincts, you see, as I say. Old habits die hard.”

“It seems you pulled Cornelius out in time again. He owes a lot to you.”

“Someone has to look after him when he goes walkabout.”

Miss Brunner glanced over to the bay windows where her old lover sat, silhouetted against the light, wrapped in a Kashmiri shawl, his eyes vacant and unblinking. “Oh, Christ,” she said, “he’s dribbling. And he used to be tipped as the Messiah to the Age of Science!” She shook her head in disgust.

“It’s his amnesia,” said Major Nye, to excuse Cornelius. “He never knows where he’s going. He just keeps revisiting certain places that have some private meaning for him, some mythological significance. He’s much better today. He keeps collapsing into catatonia, especially after one of the wandering spells. It can’t be his sister he’s looking for now. She’s perfectly safe.”

Miss Brunner glared into the vacant face. “There are no sanctuaries any more, Mr Cornelius. There are none in the past, none in the future. I advise you to make the best of the present!”

“Best not to disturb him,” said Major Nye. On frail legs stiffened at the knees by the boots, his spurs rattling a little, he went to stand behind Jerry’s wheelchair. “All right, old son. There, there, old lad.” He patted Jerry’s shoulder. Since he had lost his wife and family, Major Nye had found his only fulfilment in taking care of the mindless assassin. “He never believed in the possibility of sanctuary, you know. Not for years. He disdained the idea. He was born in the modern city, you see.”

“You mean he never needed security? I’ve known him longer than you, major, and I can tell you…”

“The city was his security, with all its horrors. As the jungle is security to the tiger, you might say. When they began to destroy his city he lost his bearings completely. For a while he evidently thought that the landscape of warfare might be a substitute, but he was wrong. It’s strange, isn’t it, how the city grew from the town which in turn grew from the encampment formed against the terrors of the wild…?”

“I don’t know anything about that. I was born in Kent.”

“Exactly. I was born in the country. We can’t possibly understand the comforting familiarity of the city to someone like Cornelius. The worse it is, in our terms, the more he feels at one with himself. Even at the end his instinct was to hide in the heart of the city, climbing to the top of a tall building for safety, reintroducing the jungle…” Major Nye’s voice faded. He smiled tenderly at his charge.

“He’s a wild beast. A monster.”

“Indeed. That’s why he became such a totem to so many.”

“I always considered his apparent sophistication, his affectation of an interest in science, to be a veneer.” Her voice became more confident as she began to feel she and the major were on common ground at last.

“On the contrary. A creature like Cornelius takes technology for granted. It is real enough to him for it to possess a genuinely mythological significance.”

Miss Brunner tightened her unlikely lips. “I never denied technology had a purpose…” She frowned. “A usefulness. If handled properly…”

“You tried to use it to maintain the old order. Your friend Beesley wanted to turn it against itself, to destroy it altogether. But Cornelius enjoyed it for its own sake. Aesthetically. He had no interest in its moral significance or its utilisation. Computers and jets and rockets and lasers and the rest were simply familiar elements of his natural environment. He didn’t judge them or question them, any more than you or I would judge or question a tree or a hill. He picked his cars, his weapons, his gadgets, in the same way that he picked his clothes—for their private meanings, for what they looked like. He enjoyed their functions, too, of course, but function was a secondary consideration. There are easier cars to drive than Duesenbergs, easier, faster, cheaper planes to fly than experimental Dorniers. He found speed exhilarating, of course, but again speed wasn’t really what he cared about. He preferred airships to jetliners because airships were more romantic, he preferred Mach 3 liners and shock-wave ships because they looked nicer and because they hinted at an ambiguous relationship with space and time—that was where the mystical element came in, as with particle physics. And have you noticed how we still continue to ape the markings of animals in our clothes—particularly our traditional formal clothes? Similarly with technology. He liked the Concorde because it looked most like an eagle. To me it was all completely bewildering, to you it was something that had to be tamed, to him it was normality. He had all the primitive’s respect for Nature, the same tendency to invest it with meaning and identity, only his Nature was the industrial city, his idea of Paradise was an urban utopia…”