Here ends the writing of my brother, Lucifer, and here I begin the fulfilment of my duty.
Too formal, Raphael. His voice even now finds time for admonishment. Try not to sound like such a tight-arsed ponce.
I can’t help smiling. He must be busy, but still he finds the time to criticize my style. Well, I must try to oblige him.
I interrupted his last sentence. Despite everything he’d said on Hydra I couldn’t let him confront his dilemma alone. I came back to England on a flight that had to skirt thunderstorms all the way to Heathrow. Thunderstorms everywhere, according to the co-pilot; a phenomenon. My fellow passengers’ fear of death filled the cabin like smoke from a smouldering fire. God didn’t have His hand over us, but the pilot was skilful, and brought us down in safety. I took a taxi straight to the Clerkenwell flat. Sheet lightning flickered.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m busy’
‘You have a decision to make,’ I said to him. He didn’t look well. His colour was bad, sallow, and his right eye was blackened. A scatter of pimples around the corners of his mouth. ‘You’ve been abusing your host,’ I said to him. ‘You can’t get away with that sort of thing indefinitely, you know, my dear.’
‘We’re back to the “my dear” are we? Look, Raphael, I know you mean well but –’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me,’ I said – I know him enough to know the tone he best responds to. ‘What are you going to do? Are you going to stay, or are you going to go?’
He placed his hands together at the base of his spine and straightened his back, the way pregnant women do.
Better, cloth-head. Now you’re getting the hang of it. That smouldering fire simile was lame, though.
‘I’m going to run a bath, that’s what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘A huge, deep, hot bath. Feel free to watch if you like, although this Gunn’s not much to shout about in the cock and balls department. Then again, as my dear XXX-Quisite Immaculata says, with the frequency of a mantra: “Iss wha’ joo doo with it. Thass what counts”.’
I waited half an hour, taking stock, meanwhile, of the condition of the flat. His inhabitancy, sporadic though it had been, had devastated the place: litter, broken bottles, dirty laundry, spilled food, manuscript pages, overloaded ashtrays, the kitchen bin overturned, not a dish washed . . . Who could be in the least surprised? How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, Son of the morning –
Er . . . Excuse me . . .
But I was wasting time. Worse, I was pandering to his wasting time. In less than five hours he would have to decide. In less than five hours they’d come for his answer. This was no time for idling in the bathtub. With a cursory knock, I entered.
‘Couldn’t keep away, could you? Thought you’d catch me at it, did you? Having a bit of a bathtime lube?’
He must have just added more hot water, because the tiny room was filled with steam. ‘Well, as you can see, here I am chastely bathing and sensibly reflecting. Close the door will you, for Baal’s sake.’
He was in fact smoking a cigar (not steam, smoke) and cradling in his palm a huge brandy balloon amply furnished with the golden liquor. There didn’t seem to be any sign of either chaste bathing or sensible reflection. He looked, as a matter of fact, like he’d just been woken from a nap.
‘There are prostitutes on your gland of an island, I take it?’ he said, swallowing a large mouthful. ‘I mean I would, in theory, be able to, you know, socialize with members of the opposite sex?’
‘Not of the calibre it seems you’re used to,’ I said. ‘But yes, of course – and if not on Hydra then on Spetses, certainly in Aegina.’
‘Certainly in Aegina,’ he said. ‘Sounds like some fucking Lawrence Durrell poem.’
‘I’m to take it from the profanities and the erratic observations that you’re drunk,’ I said, feeling, I must confess, desperately angry with him.
‘Liquid sanity,’ he said, raising the balloon in a cheers.
‘Liquid cowardice,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see that time’s running out for you?’
‘Time’s overrated,’ he said. ‘Money, on the other hand . . .’
I sighed and took a precarious seat on the edge of the tub.
‘It’s generally recommended that one undresses before getting in,’ he said.
I ran a hand over my face. (Mandros’s hands are sensitive, and store the memory of many things.) Tiredness – a deep tiredness of the bones and nerves – crept up from my feet. His wilful avoidance was like a separate entity in the room with us, draining my strength. ‘Lucifer,’ I said. ‘For love and life please listen to me. You must stay. Whether with me or alone or with someone else. Don’t you see you can’t go back? Haven’t you understood that it’s so soon going to be over? That you’ll. . . That you’ll be . . .’
‘Yes,’ he said, slowly, and seemingly with genuine seriousness. ‘Yes, my dear, I have understood everything. As always, I have understood everything. Now perhaps, if you could . . . the Swan Vestas there . . . I seem to have self-extinguished . . .’
‘Lucifer!’
‘Hmm?’
‘Do you want to spend eternity in the Hell of Nothingness?’
‘Of course I don’t want to spend – Ow! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck FUCK!’
The loss of temper had had him scrabbling to get upright; a slip, and he had conked his head on the back of the tub. He lost a good deal of the balloon’s brandy, and the cigar altogether. ‘Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking cunting Christ.’
