Cloud Atlas

Anyway, the winner was announced, and we all know who got the fifty-K prize money. I got sloshed. Guy the Guy introduced me to a cocktail called “Ground Control to Major Tom.” Time’s Arrow became Time’s Boomerang, and I lost count of all my majors. A jazz sextet kicked off a rumba. I went onto the balcony for a breather and surveyed the hubbub from without. Literary London at play put me in mind of Gibbon on the Age of the Antonines. “A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.”

Dermot found me; bad news inexorably does. Let me reiterate, bumping into Pope Pius XIII would have surprised me less. In fact, His Infallibility would have blended in better—my malcontent author wore a banana suit over a chocolate shirt and a Ribena tie. I hardly need remind the curious reader that Knuckle Sandwich was yet to take the book world by storm. It was yet to enter a bookshop, in fact, except the sage John Sandoe’s of Chelsea, and those hapless newsagents, once Jewish, then Sikh, now Eritrean, located in the Hoggins Bros.’ East End parish. Indeed, it was matters of publicity and distribution that Dermot wished to discuss on the roof garden.

I explained to him for the hundredth time how an author-partnership setup like Cavendish Publishing simply cannot fritter away money on fancy catalogs and team-building go-karting weekends for sales forces. I explained, yet again, that my authors derived fulfillment from presenting their handsomely bound volumes to friends, to family, to posterity. I explained, yet again, that the gangster-chic market was saturated; and that even Moby-Dick bombed in Melville’s lifetime, though I did not deploy that particular verb. “It is a truly fabulous memoir,” I assured him. “Give it time.”

Dermot, drunk, doleful, and deaf, looked over the railings. “All them chimneys. Long way down.”

The menace, I trusted, was imaginary. “Quite.”

“Mum took me to Mary Poppins when I was a nipper. Chimney sweeps dancing on rooftops. She watched it on video, too. Over and over. In her nursing home.”

“I remember when it came out. That dates me.”

“Here.” Dermot frowned and pointed into the bar through the French windows. “Who’s that?”

“Who’s who?”

“Him in the bow tie chatting up the tiara in the bin liner.”

“The presenter fellow, Felix .?.?. oh, Felix whatizzit?”

“Felix f*****g Finch! That c*** who shat on my book in his poncy f*****g mag?”

“It wasn’t your best review, but—”

“It was my only f*****g review!”

“It really didn’t read so badly—”

“Yeah? ‘None-hit wonders like Mr. Hoggins are the roadkills of modern letters.’ Notice how people insert the ‘Mr.’ before sinking the blade in? ‘Mr. Hoggins should apologize to the trees felled for his bloated “autobio-novel.” Four hundred vainglorious pages expire in an ending flat and inane quite beyond belief.’?”

“Steady now, Dermot, nobody actually reads the Trafalgar.”

“’Scuse!” My author collared a waiter. “Heard of the Trafalgar Review of Books?”

“Why, sure,” the East European waiter replied. “My entire faculty swears by the TRB, they’ve got the smartest reviewers.”

Dermot flung his glass over the railing.

“Come now, what’s a reviewer?” I reasoned. “One who reads quickly, arrogantly, but never wisely?.?.?.”

The jazz sextet finished their number, and Dermot left my sentence dangling. I was drunk enough to justify a taxi and was about to leave when a Cockney town crier soundalike silenced the entire gathering: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury! Your attention, please!”

Saints preserve us, Dermot was clanging a couple of trays together. “We have an additional award tonight, fellow book fairies!” he bellowed. Ignoring arch chuckles and “Oooooo!”s, he produced an envelope from his jacket pocket, slit it open, and pretended to read: “Award for Most Eminent Literary Critic.” His audience looked on, cockatooed, booed, or turned away in embarrassment. “Competition was fierce, but the panel was unanimous in choosing His Imperial Majesty of the Trafalgar Review of Books, Mr.—beg pudding, Sir—Felix Finch O, B, and E, come—on—darn!”

Stirrers crowed. “Bravo, Felix! Bravo!” Finch wouldn’t have been a critic if he didn’t love unearned attention. Doubtless he was already composing copy in his head for his Sunday Times column, “A Finch About Town.” For his part, Dermot was all sincerity and smiles. “What might my prize be, I wonder?” Finch smirked as the applause subsided. “A signed copy of an unpulped Knuckle Sandwich? Can’t be many of those left!” Finch’s coterie chorused hooty laughter, spurring on their commissar. “Or do I win a free flight to a South American country with leaky extradition treaties?”

“Yeah, lovie”—Dermot winked—“a free flight is exactly what you won.”

My author grabbed Finch’s lapels, rolled backwards, sank his feet into Finch’s girth, and judo-propelled the shorter-than-generally-realized media personality high into the night air! High above the pansies lining the balcony railing.

Finch’s shriek—his life—ended in crumpled metal, twelve floors down.

Someone’s drink poured onto the carpet.

Dermot “Duster” Hoggins brushed his lapels, leaned over the balcony, and yelled: “So who’s expired in an ending flat and inane quite beyond belief now?”

The dumbstruck crowd parted as the murderer made his way to the nibblies table. Several witnesses later recalled a dark halo. He selected a Belgian cracker adorned with Biscay anchovies and parsley drizzled with sesame oil.

The crowd’s senses flooded back. Gagging noises, oh-my-Gods, and a stampede for the stairs. The most frightful hullabaloo! My thoughts? Honestly? Horror. Assuredly. Shock? You bet. Disbelief? Naturally. Fear? Not really.

I will not deny a nascent sense of a silver lining to this tragic turn. My Haymarket office suite housed ninety- five unsold shrink-wraps of Dermot Hoggins’s Knuckle Sandwich, impassioned memoir of Britain’s soon to be most famous murderer. Frank Sprat—my stalwart printer in Sevenoaks, to whom I owed so much money I had the poor man over a barrel—still had the plates and was ready to roll at a moment’s notice.

Hardcovers, ladies and gentlemen.

Fourteen pounds ninety-nine pence a shot.

A taste of honey!

As an experienced editor, I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory. I make no apology, however, for (re)starting my own narrative with my version of that shocking affair. You see, it paved my first good intention on the road to Hull, or rather Hull’s hinterland, where my ghastly ordeal is fated to unfold. My fortune took the glorious turn I had foreseen after Felix Finch’s Final Fling. On the wings of sweet, free publicity, my Knuckle Sandwich turkey soared up the bestseller charts, where it roosted until poor Dermot was sentenced to fifteen of the best in Wormwood Scrubs. The trial made the Nine O’Clock News at every turn. In death Sir Felix changed from a smug-scented pomposity with a Stalinist grip on Arts Council money into, oh, Britain’s best-loved arts guru since the last one.

On the steps of the Old Bailey, his widow told reporters fifteen years was “disgustingly lenient,” and the very next day a “Duster Hoggins, Rot in Hell!” campaign was launched. Dermot’s family counterattacked on chat shows, Finch’s offending review was pored over, BBC2 commissioned a special documentary in which the lesbian who interviewed me edited my witticisms wholly out of context. Who cared? The money pot bubbled away—no, it boiled over and set the entire ruddy kitchen alight. Cavendish Publishing—Mrs. Latham and I, that is—didn’t know what had hit us. We had to take on two of her nieces (part-time, of course, I wasn’t getting clobbered for National Insurance). The original Knuckle Sandwich shrink-wraps vanished within thirty-six hours, and Frank Sprat was reprinting on a near-monthly basis. Nothing in my four decades in the publishing game had geared us for such success. Running costs had always been recouped from author donations—not from actual ruddy