Текст книги "The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul"
Автор книги: Douglas Noel Adams
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Chapter 8
By the end of the morning Kate had discharged herself from hospital. There were some initial difficulties involved in this because first the ward sister and then the doctor in charge of Kate's case were adamant that she was in no fit state to leave. She had only just emerged from a minor coma and she needed care, she needed -
«Pizza» – insisted Kate.
– rest, she needed -
«– my own home, and fresh air. The air in here is horrible. It smells like a vacuum cleaner's armpit.»
– further medication, and should definitely remain under observation for another day or so until they were satisfied that she had made a full recovery.
At least, they were fairly adamant. During the course of the morning Kate demanded and got a telephone and started trying to order pizza to be delivered to her ward. She phoned around all of the least co-operative pizza restaurants she knew in London, harangued them, then made some noisily unsuccessful attempts to muster a motorbike to roam around the West End and try and pick up for her an American Hot with a list of additional peppers and mushrooms and cheeses which the controller of the courier service refused even to attempt to remember, and after an hour or so of this sort of behaviour the objections to Kate discharging herself from the hospital gradually fell away like petals from an autumn rose.
And so, a little after lunchtime, she was standing on a bleak West London street feeling weak and shaky but in charge of herself. She had with her the empty, tattered remains of the garment bag which she had refused to relinquish, and also a small scrap of paper in her purse, which had a single name scribbled on it.
She hailed a taxi and sat in the back with her eyes closed most of the way back to her home in Primrose Hill. She climbed up the stairs and let herself into her top-floor flat. There were ten messages on her answering machine, which she simply erased without listening to.
She threw open the window in her bedroom and for a moment or two leaned out of it at the rather dangerous and awkward angle which allowed her to see a patch of the park. It was a small corner patch, with just a couple of plane trees standing in it. The backs of some of the intervening houses framed it, or rather, just failed totally to obscure it, and made it very personal and private to Kate in a way which a vast, sweeping vista would not have been.
On one occasion she had gone to this corner of the park and walked around the invisible perimeter that marked out the limits of what she could see, and had come very close to feeling that this was her own domain. She had even patted the plane trees in a proprietorial sort of way, and had then sat beneath them watching the sun going down over London – over its badly spoiled skyline and its non-delivering pizza restaurants – and had come away with a profound sense of something or other, though she wasn't quite certain what. Still, she had told herself, these days she should feel grateful for a profound sense of anything at all, however unspecific.
She hauled herself in from the window, left it wide open in spite of the chill of the outside air, padded through into the small bathroom and ran the bath. It was a bath of the sprawling Edwardian type which took up a wonderfully disproportionate amount of the space available, and encompassed most of the rest of the room with cream-painted pipes. The taps seethed. As soon as the room was sufficiently full of steam to be warm, Kate undressed and then went and opened the large bathroom cupboard.
She felt faintly embarrassed by the sheer profusion of things she had for putting in baths, but she was for some reason incapable of passing any chemist or herb shop without going in to be seduced by some glass-stoppered bottle of something blue or green or orange and oily that was supposed to restore the natural balance of some vague substance she didn't even know she was supposed to have in her pores.
She paused, trying to choose.
Something pink? Something with extra Vitamin B? Vitamin B12? B13? Just the number of things with different types of Vitamin B in them was an embarrassment of choice in itself. There were powders as well as oils, tubes of gel, even packets of some kind of pungent smelling seed that was meant to be good for some obscure part of you in some arcane way.
How about some of the green crystals? One day, she had told herself in the past, she would not even bother trying to choose, but would simply put a bit of everything in. When she really felt in need of it. She rather thought that today was the day, and with a sudden reviving rush of pleasure she set about pouring a drop or two of everything in the cupboard into the seething bath until it was confused with mingling, muddying colours and verging on the glutinous to touch.
She turned off the taps, went to her handbag for a moment, then returned and lowered herself into the bath, where she lay with her eyes closed, breathing slowly for fully three minutes before at last turning her attention to the scrap of paper she had brought with her from the hospital.
It had one word on it, and it was a word she had dragged out of an oddly reluctant young nurse who had taken her temperature that morning.
Kate had questioned her about the big man. The big man whom she had encountered at the airport, whose body she had seen in a nearby side ward in the early hours of the night.
«Oh no,» the nurse had said, «he wasn't dead. He was just in some sort of coma.»
Could she see him? Kate had asked. What was his name?
She had tried to ask idly, in passing as it were, which was a difficult trick to pull off with a thermometer in her mouth, and she wasn't at all certain she had succeeded. The nurse had said that she couldn't really say, she wasn't really meant to talk about other patients. And anyway, the man wasn't there any more, he had been taken somewhere else. They had sent an ambulance to collect him and take him somewhere else.
This had taken Kate considerably by surprise.
Where had they taken him? What was this special place? But the nurse had been unwilling to say anything much more, and a second or two later had been summoned away by the Sister. The only word the nurse had said was the one that Kate had then scribbled down on the piece of paper she was now looking at.
The word was «Woodshead».
Now that she was more relaxed she had a feeling that the name was familiar to her in some way, though she could not remember where she had heard it.
The instant she remembered, she could not stay in the bath any longer, but got out and made straight for the telephone, pausing only briefly to shower all the gunk off her.
Chapter 9
The big man awoke and tried to look up, but could hardly raise his head. He tried to sit up but couldn't do that either. He felt as if he'd been stuck to the floor with superglue and after a few seconds he discovered the most astounding reason for this.
He jerked his head up violently, yanking out great tufts of yellow hair which stayed painfully stuck to the floor, and looked around him. He was in what appeared to be a derelict warehouse, probably an upper floor judging by the wintry sky he could see creeping past the grimy, shattered windows.
The ceilings were high and hung with cobwebs built by spiders who did not seem to mind that most of what they caught was crumbling plaster and dust. They were supported by pillars made from upright steel joists on which the dirty old cream paint was bubbled and flaking, and these in turn stood on a floor of battered old oak on to which he had clearly been glued. Extending out for a foot or two in a rough oval all around his naked body the floor glistened darkly and dully. Thin, nostril-cleaning fumes rose from it. He could not believe it. He roared with rage, tried to wriggle and shake himself but succeeded only in tugging painfully at his skin where it was stuck fast to the oak planks.
This had to be the old man's doing.
He threw his head back hard against the floor in a blow that cracked the boards and made his ears sing. He roared again and took some furious satisfaction in making as much hopeless, stupid noise as he could. He roared until the steel pillars rang and the cracked remains of the windows shattered into finer shards. Then, as he threw his head angrily from one side to the other he caught sight of his sledge-hammer leaning against the wall a few feet from him, heaved it up into the air with a word, and sent it hurtling round the great space, beating and clanging on every pillar until the whole building reverberated like a mad gong.
Another word and the hammer flew back at him, missed his head by a hand's-width and punched straight down through the floor, shattering the wood and the plaster below.
In the darker space beneath him the hammer spun, and swung round in a slow heavy parabola as bits of plaster fell about it and rattled on the concrete floor below. Then it gathered a violent momentum and hurtled back up through the ceiling, smacking up a stack of startled splinters as it punched through another oak floorboard a hand's-width from the soles of the big man's feet.
It soared up into the air, hung there for a moment as if its weight had suddenly vanished, then, deftly flicking its short handle up above its head, it drove hard back down through the floor again – then up again, then down again, punching holes in a splintered ring around its master until, with a long heavy groan, the whole oval section of punctured floor gave way and plunged, twisting, through the air. It shattered itself against the floor below amidst a rain of plaster debris, from which the figure of the big man then emerged, staggering, flapping at the dusty air and coughing. His back, his arms and his legs were still covered with great splintered hunks of oak flooring, but at least he was able to move. He leant the flat of his hands against the wall and violently coughed some of the dust from his lungs.
As he turned back, his hammer danced out of the air towards him, then suddenly evaded his grasp and skidded joyfully off across the floor striking sparks from the concrete with its great head, flipped up and parked itself against a nearby pillar at a jaunty angle.
In front of him the shape of a large Coca-Cola vending machine loomed through the settling cloud of dust. He regarded it with the gravest suspicion and worry. It stood there with a sort of glazed, blank look to it, and had a note from his father stuck on the front panel saying whatever he was doing, stop it. It was signed «You-know-who», but this had been crossed out and first the word «Odin» and then in larger letters «Your Father» had been substituted. Odin never ceased to make absolutely clear his view of his son's intellectual accomplishments. The big man tore the note off and stared at it in anger. A postscript added darkly «Remember Wales. You don't want to go through all that again.» He screwed the note up and hurled it out of the nearest window, where the wind whipped it up and away. For a moment he thought he heard an odd squeaking noise, but it was probably just the blustering of the wind as it whistled between the nearby derelict buildings.
He turned and walked to the window and stared out of it in a belligerent sulk. Glued to the floor. At his age. What the devil was that supposed to mean? «Keep your head down,» was what he guessed. «If you don't keep it down, I'll have to keep it down for you.» That was what it meant. «Stick to the ground.»
He remembered now the old man saying exactly that to him at the time of all the unpleasantness with the Phantom fighter jet. «Why can't you just stick to the ground?» he had said. He could imagine the old man in his soft-headed benign malice thinking it very funny to make the lesson so literal.
Rage began to rumble menacingly inside him but he pushed it down hard. Very worrying things had recently begun happening when he got angry and he had a bad feeling, looking back at the Coca-Cola vending machine, that another of those very worrying things must have just happened. He stared at it and fretted.
He felt ill.
He had felt ill a lot of late, and he found it impossible to discharge what were left of his godly duties when he felt he was suffering from a sort of continual low-grade flu. He experienced headaches, dizzy spells, guilt and all the sorts of ailments that were featured so often in television advertisements. He even suffered terrifying blackouts whenever the great rage gripped him.
He always used to have such a wonderful time getting angry. Great gusts of marvellous anger would hurl him through life. He felt huge. He felt flooded with power and light and energy. He had always been provided with such wonderful things to get angry about – immense acts of provocation or betrayal, people hiding the Atlantic ocean in his helmet, dropping continents on him or getting drunk and pretending to be trees. Stuff you could really work up a rage about and hit things. In short he had felt good about being a Thunder God. Now suddenly it was headaches, nervous tension, nameless anxieties and guilt. These were new experiences for a god, and not pleasant ones.
«You look ridiculous!»
The voice screeched out and affected Thor like fingernails scratched across a blackboard lodged in the back of his brain. It was a mean voice, a spiteful, jeering voice, a cheap white nylon shirt of a voice, a shiny-trousered pencil moustache of a voice, a voice, in short, which Thor did not like. He reacted very badly to it at the best of times, and was particularly provoked to have to hear it while standing naked in the middle of a decrepit warehouse with large sections of an oak floor still stuck to his back.
He spun round angrily. He wanted to be able to turn round calmly and with crushing dignity, but no such strategy ever worked with this creature, and since he, Thor, would only end up feeling humiliated and ridiculous whatever posture he adopted, he might as well go with one he felt comfortable with.
«Toe Rag!» he roared, yanked his hammer spinning into the air and hurled it with immense, stunning force at the small creature who was squatting complacently in the shadows on top of a small heap of rubble, leaning forward a little.
Toe Rag caught the hammer and placed it neatly on top of the pile of Thor's clothes that lay next to him. He grinned, and allowed a stray shaft of sunlight to glitter on one of his teeth. These things don't happen by accident. Toe Rag had spent some time while Thor was unconscious working out how long it would take him to recover, then industriously moving the pile of rubble to exactly this spot, checking the height and then calculating the exact angle at which to lean. As a provocateur he regarded himself as a professional.
«Did you do this to me?» roared Thor. «Did you» —
Thor searched for any way of saying «glue me to the floor» that didn't sound like «glue me to floor», but eventually the pause got too long and he had to give up.
«– glue me to the floor?» he demanded at last. He wished he hadn't asked such a stupid question.
«Don't even answer that!» he added angrily and wished he hadn't said that either. He stamped his foot and shook the foundations of the building a little just to make the point. He wasn't certain what the point was, but he felt that it had to be made. Some dust settled gently around him.
Toe Rag watched him with his dancing, glittering eyes.
«I merely carry out the instructions given to me by your father,» he said in a grotesque parody of obsequiousness.
«It seems to me,» said Thor, «that the instructions my father has been giving since you entered his service have been very odd. I think you have some kind of evil grip on him. I don't know what kind of evil grip it is, but it's definitely a grip, and it's definitely…» synonyms failed him«…evil,» he concluded.
Toe Rag reacted like an iguana to whom someone had just complained about the wine.
«Me?» he protested. «How can I possibly have a grip on your father? Odin is the greatest of the Gods of Asgard, and I am his devoted servant in all things. Odin says, „Do this“, and I do it. Odin says, „Go there“, and I go there. Odin says, „Go and get my big stupid son out of hospital before he causes any more trouble, and then, I don't know, glue him to the floor or something“, and I do exactly as he asks. I am merely the most humble of functionaries. However small or menial the task, Odin's bidding is what I am there to perform.»
Thor was not sufficiently subtle a student of human nature or, for that matter, divine or goblin nature, to be able to argue that this was in fact a very powerful grip to hold over anybody, particularly a fallible and pampered old god. He just knew that it was all wrong.
«Well then,» he shouted, «take this message back to my father, Odin. Tell him that I, Thor, the God of Thunder, demand to meet him. And not in his damned hospital either! I'm not going to hang about reading magazines and looking at fruit while he has his bed changed! Tell him that Thor, the God of Thunder, will meet Odin, the Father of the Gods of Asgard, tonight, at the Challenging Hour in the Halls of Asgard!»
«Again?» said Toe Rag, with a sly glance sideways at the Coca-Cola vending machine.
«Er, yes,» said Thor. «Yes!» he repeated in a rage. «Again!»
Toe Rag made a tiny sigh, such as one who felt resigned to carrying out the bidding of a temperamental simpleton might make, and said, «Well, I'll tell him. I don't suppose he will be best pleased.»
«It is no matter of yours whether he is pleased or not!» shouted Thor, disturbing the foundations of the building once more. «This is between my father and myself! You may think yourself very clever, Toe Rag, and you may think that I am not» —
Toe Rag arched an eyebrow. He had prepared for this moment. He stayed silent and merely let the stray beam of sunlight glint on his dancing eyes. It was a silence of the most profound eloquence.
«I may not know what you're up to, Toe Rag, I may not know a lot of things, but I do know one thing. I know that I am Thor, the God of Thunder, and that I will not be made a fool of by a goblin!»
«Well,» said Toe Rag with a light grin, «when you know two things I expect you'll be twice as clever. Remember to put your clothes on before you go out.» He gestured casually at the pile beside him and departed.
Chapter 10
The trouble with the sort of shop that sells things like magnifying glasses and penknives is that they tend also to sell all kinds of other fascinating things, like the quite extraordinary device with which Dirk eventually emerged after having been hopelessly unable to decide between the knife with the built-in Philips screwdriver, toothpick and ball-point pen and the one with the 13-tooth gristle saw and the tig-welded rivets.
The magnifying glasses had held him in thrall for a short while, particularly the 25-diopter, high-index, vacuum-deposited, gold-coated glass model with the integral handle and mount and the notchless seal glazing, but then Dirk had happened to catch sight of a small electronic I Ching calculator and he was lost.
He had never before even guessed at the existence of such a thing. And to be able to move from total ignorance of something to total desire for it, and then actually to own the thing all within the space of about forty seconds was, for Dirk, something of an epiphany.
The electronic I Ching calculator was badly made. It had probably been manufactured in whichever of the South-East Asian countries was busy tooling up to do to South Korea what South Korea was busy doing to Japan. Glue technology had obviously not progressed in that country to the point where things could be successfully held together with it. Already the back had half fallen off and needed to be stuck back on with Sellotape.
It was much like an ordinary pocket calculator, except that the LCD screen was a little larger than usual, in order to accommodate the abridged judgements of King Wen on each of the sixty-four hexagrams, and also the commentaries of his son, the Duke of Chou, on each of the lines of each hexagram. These were unusual texts to see marching across the display of a pocket calculator, particularly as they had been translated from the Chinese via the Japanese and seemed to have enjoyed many adventures on the way.
The device also functioned as an ordinary calculator, but only to a limited degree. It could handle any calculation which returned an answer of anything up to «4».
«1+1» it could manage («2»), and «1+2» («3») and «2+2» («4») or «tan 74» («3.4874145»), but anything above «4» it represented merely as «A Suffusion of Yellow». Dirk was not certain if this was a programming error or an insight beyond his ability to fathom, but he was crazy about it anyway, enough to hand over 20 of ready cash for the thing.
«Thank you, sir,» said the proprietor. «It's a nice piece that. I think you'll be happy with it.»
«I ab,» said Dirk.
«Glad to hear it, sir,» replied the proprietor. «Do you know you've broken your nose?»
Dirk looked up from fawning on his new possession.
«Yedth,» he said testily, «obf courth I dknow.»
The man nodded, satisfied.
«Just that a lot of my customers wouldn't always know about a thing like that,» he explained.
Dirk thanked him tersely and hurried out with his purchase. A few minutes later he took up residence at the small corner table of an Islington caf, ordered a small but incredibly strong cup of coffee; and attempted to take stock of his day. A moment's reflection told him that he was almost certainly going to need a small but incredibly strong beer as well, and he attempted to add this to his order.
«A wha?» said the waiter. His hair was very black and filled with brilliantine. He was tall, incredibly fit and too cool to listen to customers or say consonants.
Dirk repeated his order, but what with having the caf's music system, a broken nose, and the waiter's insuperable cool to contend with, he eventually found it simpler to write out the order on a napkin with a stub of pencil. The waiter peered at it in an offended manner, and left.
Dirk exchanged a friendly nod with the girl sitting half reading a book at the next table, who had watched this exchange with sympathy. Then he set about laying out his morning's acquisitions on the table in front of him – the newspaper, the electronic I Ching calculator and the envelope which he had retrieved from behind the gold disc on Geoffrey Anstey's bathroom wall. He then spent a minute or two dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief, and prodding it tenderly to see how much it hurt, which turned out to be quite a lot. He sighed and stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket.
A few seconds later the waiter returned bearing a herb omelette and a single breadstick. Dirk explained that this wasn't what he had ordered. The waiter shrugged and said that it wasn't his fault.
Dirk had no idea what to say to this, and said so. He was still having a great deal of difficulty speaking. The waiter asked Dirk if he knew that he had broken his nose and Dirk said that yedth, dthagg you berry budge, he did. The waiter said that his friend Neil had once broken his nose and Dirk said that he hobed it hurd like hell, which seemed to draw the conversation to a close. The waiter took the omelette and left, vowing never to return.
When the girl sitting at the next table looked away for a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee. He knew that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be able to believe that this had happened. He sat sipping at the lukewarm cup and casting his mind back over the day.
He knew that before consulting the I Ching, even an electronic one, he should try and compose his thoughts and allow them to settle calmly.
This was a tough one.
However much he tried to clear his mind and think in a calm and collected way, he was unable to stop Geoffrey Anstey's head revolving incessantly in his mind. It revolved disapprovingly, as if pointing an accusing finger at Dirk. The fact that it did not have an accusing finger with which to point only served to drive the point it was trying to make home all the harder.
Dirk screwed up his eyes and attempted to concentrate instead on the problem of the mysteriously vanished Miss Pearce, but was unable to get much of a grip on it. When she had used to work for him she would often disappear mysteriously for two or three days at a time, but the papers didn't make any kind of fuss about it then. Admittedly, there weren't things exploding around her at the time, at least, not that he was aware of. She had never mentioned anything exploding particularly.
Furthermore, whenever he thought of her face, which he had last seen on the television set in Geoffrey Anstey's house, his thoughts tended instantly to sink towards the head which was busy revolving thirty-three and a third times a minute three floors beneath it. This was not conducive to the calm and contemplative mood he was seeking. Nor was the very loud music on the caf's music system.
He sighed, and starred at the electronic I Ching calculator.
If he wanted to get his thoughts into some kind of order then maybe chronological order would be as good a one as any. He decided to cast his mind back to the beginning of the day, before any of these appalling things had happened, or at least, before they'd happened to him.
First there had been the fridge.
It seemed to him that by comparison with everything else, the problem of what to do about his fridge had now shrunk to fairly manageable proportions. It still provoked a discernible twinge of fear and guilt, but here, he thought, was a problem which he could face up to with relative calm.
The little book of instructions suggested that he should simply concentrate «soulfully» on the question which was «besieging» him, write it down, ponder on it, enjoy the silence, and then once he had achieved inner harmony and tranquillity he should push the red button.
There wasn't a red button, but there was a blue button marked «Red», and this Dirk took to be the one.
He concentrated for a while on the question, then looked through his pockets for a piece of paper, but was unable to find one. In the end he wrote his question, «Should I buy a new fridge?» on a corner of his napkin. Then he took the view that if he was going to wait until he had achieved inner harmony and tranquillity he could be there all night, so he went ahead and pushed the blue button marked «Red» anyway. A symbol flashed up in a corner of the screen, a hexagram which looked like this:
************ ***********
************************
************ ***********
************ ***********
************ ***********
************************
3: CHUN
the I Ching calculator then scrolled this text Across its tiny LCD display:
«THE JUDGEMENT OF KING WEN:
„Chun Signifies Difficulties At Outset, As Of Blade
Of
Grass Pushing Up Against Stone. The Time Is Full
Of
Irregularities And Obscurities: Superior Man Will Adjust
His Measures As In Sorting The Threads Of The Warp
And Woof. Firm Correctness Will Bring At Last Success.
Early Advances Should Only Be Made With Caution.
There Will Be Advantage In Appointing Feudal Princes.“»
LINE 6 CHANGES:
«THE COMMENTARY OF THE DUKE OF CHOU:
„The Horses And The Chariot Obliged To Retreat.
Streams Of Bloody Tears Will Flow.“»
Dirk considered this for a few moments, and then decided that on balance it appeared to be a vote in favour of getting the new fridge, which, by a staggering coincidence, was the course of action which he himself favoured.
There was a pay phone in one of the dark corners where waiters slouched moodily at one another. Dirk threaded his way through them, wondering whom it was they reminded him of, and eventually deciding that it was the small crowd of naked men standing around behind the Holy Family in Michelangelo's picture of the same name, for no more apparent reason than that Michelangelo rather liked them.
He telephoned an acquaintance of his called Nobby Paxton, or so he claimed, who worked the darker side of the domestic appliance supply business. Dirk came straight to the point.
«Dobby, I deed a fridge.»
«Dirk, I been saving one against the day you'd ask me.»
Dirk found this highly unlikely.
«Only I wand a good fridge you thee, Dobby.»
«This is the best, Dirk. Japanese. Microprocessor controlled.»
«What would a microprothethor be doing id a fridge, Dobby?»
«Keeping itself cool, Dirk. I'll get the lads to bring it round right away. I need to get it off the premises pretty sharpish for reasons which I won't trouble you with.»
«I apprethiade thid, Dobby,» said Dirk. «Froblem id, I'm not at home at preddent.»
«Gaining access to houses in the absence of their owner is only one of the panoply of skills with which my lads are blessed. Let me know if you find anything missing afterwards, by the way.»
«I'd be happy to, Dobby. Id fact if your ladth are in a mood for carting thtuff off I'd be glad if they would thtart with my old fridge. It badly needth throwing away.»
«I shall see that it's done, Dirk. There's usually a skip or two on your street these days. Now, do you expect to be paying for this or shall I just get you kneecapped straight off, save everybody time and aggravation all round?»
It was never one hundred per cent clear to Dirk exactly when Nobby was joking and he was not keen to put it to the test. He assured him that he would pay him, as soon as next they met.
«See you very soon then, Dirk,» said Nobby. «By the way, do you know you sound exactly as if someone's broken your nose?»
There was a pause.
«You there, Dirk?» said Nobby.
«Yed,» said Dirk. «I wad judd liddening to a reggord.»
«Hot Potato!» roared the hi-fi in the caf.
«Don't pick it up. pick it up, pick it up.
Quick, pass it on, pass it on, pass it on.»
«I said, do you know you sound exactly as if someone's broken your nose?» repeated Nobby.
Dirk said that he did know this, thanked Nobby for pointing it out, said goodbye, stood thoughtfully for a moment, made another quick couple of phone calls, and then threaded his way back through the huddle of posing waiters to find the girl whose coffee he had appropriated sitting at his table.
