“All right,” he said slowly, “you tell me.”
“First, you don’t like the bird because you hate to see me being able to earn a living. Then you hate yourself because you can’t. You’re so fucked-up you can’t see I’m doing it for both of us.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, Morty. Not bullshit, fact. But most of all,” she paused, wondering if it was wise to say all this while he was driving.
“Yes, most of all…”
“Most of all it is because you’re frightened of pleasure. You can’t have pleasure yourself. You don’t know how. You can’t stand the sight of me having pleasure. You can’t give me pleasure, so you’re damned if anything else is going to.”
The car swung off the road and on to the verge. It skidded in gravel. For a moment, as the wheels locked and the car slid sideways, she thought that it would roll. It turned 180 degrees and faced back the way it had come, its engine silent, red lights burning brightly on the dash.
“You’re saying I’m a lousy fuck.”
“I’m saying you give me no pleasure.”
“You used to make enough noise.”
“I loved you. I wanted to make you happy.”
Mort didn’t say anything for a moment. The silence was a tight pink membrane stretched through pale air.
She looked at the warning lights, thinking the ignition should be turned off.
She was expecting something, but when the blow came she did not know what happened. It felt like an ugly granite lump of hate, not a fist. Her head was hit sideways against the window.
Everything that happened then was slow and fast all at once. She felt wetness on her face and found tears rather than the blood she had expected. At the same time she saw the bird rise from her lap and fly at Mort. She saw Mort cower beneath the steering wheel and saw the bird peck at his head. She saw, like a slow motion replay, the policeman walk on to the road howling with pain. She quietly picked up the bird in both hands as she had done it a hundred times every day, and quietly wrung its neck.
She held the body on her lap, stroking it.
She watched Mort whom she did not love weep across the steering wheel.
9.
They drove in grey silence for there was nothing else to do. It was as if they travelled along the bottom of the ocean floor. If there was sun they didn’t see it. If there were clouds they took no note of their shapes or colours.
If they had come to a motel first it is possible that the ending might have been different but, turning down a road marked A34, they came to their first forest of Kennecott Rock-drill. It grew across the road like a wall. It spread through a shopping complex and across a service station. Water gushed from broken pipes.
When they left the car the smell of gasoline enveloped them and in the service station they saw a huge underground tank pushed up through a tangle of roots and broken concrete, its ruptured skin veiled by an inflammable haze.
Lilly heard a sharp noise, a drumming, and looked to see Mort hammering on the car’s bonnet with clenched fists, drumming like a child in a tantrum. He began screaming. There were no words at first. And then she saw what he had seen. Above their heads the branches of the trees were crowded with the birds, each one as blue and jewel-like as the dead body that lay in the front seat of the car. Through mists of gasoline Lilly saw, or imagined she saw, a curious arrogance in their movements, for all the world like troops who have just accomplished a complicated and elegant victory.
The Last Days of a Famous Mime
1.
The Mime arrived on Alitalia with very little luggage: a brown paper parcel and what looked like a woman’s handbag.
Asked the contents of the brown paper parcel he said, “String.”
Asked what the string was for he replied: “Tying up bigger parcels.”
It had not been intended as a joke, but the Mime was pleased when the reporters laughed. Inducing laughter was not his forte. He was famous for terror.
Although his state of despair was famous throughout Europe, few guessed at his hope for the future. “The string,” he explained, “is a prayer that I am always praying.”
Reluctantly he untied his parcel and showed them the string. It was blue and when extended measured exactly fifty-three metres.
The Mime and the string appeared on the front pages of the evening papers.
2.
The first audiences panicked easily. They had not been prepared for his ability to mime terror. They fled their seats continually. Only to return again.
Like snorkel divers they appeared at the doors outside the concert hall with red faces and were puzzled to find the world as they had left it.
3.
Books had been written about him. He was the subject of an award-winning film. But in his first morning in a provincial town he was distressed to find that his performance had not been liked by the one newspaper’s one critic.
“I cannot see,” the critic wrote, “the use of invoking terror in an audience.”
The Mime sat on his bed, pondering ways to make his performance more light-hearted.
4.
As usual he attracted women who wished to still the raging storms of his heart.
They attended his bed like highly paid surgeons operating on a difficult case. They were both passionate and intelligent. They did not suffer defeat lightly.
