Medusa Frequency Read online

  The train rumbled eastward through the evening. People surged on and off, each face sharp and clear and undeniably of the present moment. At every station I felt more responsive, as if a slider on a rheostat was advancing with the train: Sloane Square, Victoria, St James’s Park, Westminster, Embankment, Temple, Blackfriars, Mansion House, Cannon Street, Monument…

  Tower Hill! With others I poured out of the train in a many-legged movement up the stairs into the bright darkness and the smell of roasting chestnuts and the purposeful rush towards us of homegoers from the offices all around, their faces strong with evening and November, sharp and clear with actuality under the pinky-orange hibiscus lamps, under the wild sky and the dark tower by the running of the dark and shining river.

  Past Trinity Square I went, looking up at the dim whiteness of the Port of London Authority with its columns and its statue that was now obscure in its niche, the building fabulous against the dark sky like an Edmund Dulac mosque. I turned into Savage Gardens, full moons in my mind and innocent mystic lions by the Douanier Rousseau. No moon, no lions. I continued past Trinity House with its elegant lantern, past new brick and stone rising from the old. On one of the old brick arches of the railway bridge to Fenchurch Street Station I saw black lettering on a white background: The Orpheus & Tower Bridge Club. The club itself was on the near side of the railway bridge, just beyond Ye Olde Englishe Clubbe. Through the arch of the bridge the Cheshire Cheese was visible.

  The entrance to the Orpheus & Tower Bridge Club was a modest glass door like that of a small hotel. By then I understood that the main fact of this particular evening was the novembering of it, the pinky-orange hibiscus lamplight, the clear bright darkness between the lamps, the smell of roasting chestnuts, the coming to a point of the dwindling year; I went past the door without stopping, I didn’t want to fill in a form.

  Before me the bridge loomed great-arched, great-shadowed, high in the lonesome evening, waiting like a stage set while the trains rumbled over it into and out of Fenchurch Street. In Crutched Friars in the darkness under the bridge the Cheshire Cheese stood dimly and invited with its golden windows. It looked not too lively, not too bright, decently tired. A sign on the door warned that:

  PERSONS WITH

  DIRTY CLOTHES, BOOTS, OR SHOES

  WILL NOT BE SERVED HERE.

  I went into the public bar, a commodious and quiet place in which black-shaded spotlights hanging from a high and shadowy black ceiling stared down at carpeting with a geometric pattern of a floral sort in various tones of red. Red glass-shaded lamps on the walls gave a warm light to the tables, the banquettes, the carpeting, the sitting and standing figures, that warmth reaching only to a certain height where it yielded to the downward-reaching shadows of the black ceiling and the sparse glare of the black-shaded spotlights. Between the ascending red and the descending black the murmur of the drinkers made an invisible shelter, a canopy of overlapping quiet voices. From the saloon bar were heard cheering and shouts and high-spirited conversation, but this part of the Cheshire Cheese was of a more subdued and thoughtful character. A man in a blue short-sleeved shirt went about gathering up beer mugs and glasses, occasionally speaking with an accent so regional that it used up all his articulation and left nothing over for words. ‘Gom yawncher!’ he said to a man at one of the tables.

  ‘Aye,’ said the other, ‘it’s always the same.’

  Two old coughers nearby stopped coughing, rolled fresh cigarettes, lit them, inhaled, started coughing again.

  As the gom yawncher man passed me I recognized him as the man in the broken-brimmed hat who’d spoken to me in the underground when I was on my way home from Istvan Fallok’s studio with electrodes all over my head.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Nimser vo,’ he said.

  ‘You weren’t talking like that the other day. How come?’

  ‘I must’ve been somebody else then.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Economy. You have a little chat with a stranger now and then, right? So do I, so does everyone. How many lines has the stranger got? Two or three maybe. There’s really no need for a new actor each time, is there.’

  ‘So you play them all.’

  ‘The same as you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Yesterday you were the conductor on the 11 bus and you also did quite a nice little tobacconist in the Charing Cross Road. Actually London hasn’t got that big a cast, there’s only about fifty of us, all working flat out.’

  ‘Are you writing a novel?’

  ‘Novel-writing is for weaklings,’ he said, and moved on.

  I went to the bar, got a half-pint of bitter and a large whisky, found myself a table and sank into a deep quietude.

  Near me a young man was showing photographs to a young woman. From the position of their knees I guessed that this must be an early stage of their acquaintance. The banquette on which they sat ran north-east and south-west; his knees faced east without touching her south-facing ones while she bent over the photographs with polite interest. Well, I thought, they have it all before them, and there was a surge of sadness and longing in me.

  When I looked around again I saw Melanie Falsepercy just taking off her coat as she sat down in a corner by one of the red-shaded lamps. Her face seemed to have been called up on the evening air by the hibiscus lamplight, the clear bright darkness, the smell of roasting chestnuts, the winter-sharp woodland of the year that she brought in with her. Istvan Fallok was with her; without seeing me he sat down with his back to me.

  She hadn’t noticed me. I moved around to the other side of the table so that my back was to her and Fallok. All of it is happening now, I thought, and any part of it contains the whole of it, the pictures needn’t be looked at in any particular order. I turned around and found Melanie Falsepercy looking straight at me. I looked away, finished my drink quickly, and slunk out of the Cheshire Cheese without looking back.

  9 The Thinking Man’s Cabbage

  The morning after seeing Melanie Falsepercy and Istvan Fallok at the Cheshire Cheese I crossed Putney Bridge at a little after seven and went to the place where the head had first appeared to me.

  The sky grew pale, a crow flew over the river, shouting and flaunting its blackness.

  ‘Head of Orpheus,’ I said, ‘are you there?’

  Nothing in the river but the boats at their moorings, nothing on the shore but me. Traffic hissing and rushing over the bridge and on the Lower Richmond Road. I could feel that it was going to be one of those hard blue-sky sunny days and my heart sank.

  ‘Sol Mazzaroth wants me to do an upmarket Orpheus story,’ I said, ‘but I don’t want to do it. I want to hear what you have to tell me, we have to finish your story.’

  Nothing. A second crow flew over the river shouting and flaunting like the other. A third crow followed the second. The sky was hard and blue like painted steel.

  ‘Thank you very much indeed,’ I said, and went home.

  ‘Mr Orff?’ said the telephone.

  ‘This is we.’

  ‘I have a call for you from Sol Mazzaroth,’ said the voice of the Classic Comics telephonist. Her name was Lucretia and she was a perfectly respectable woman of fifty or so whose voice had in it just the slightest hint of high boots and a whip.

  ‘Hi, Sol,’ I said.

  ‘Just a moment,’ she said, ‘I haven’t put him on yet.’

  ‘Ring me back when he’s on then,’ I said, and hung up. Ring, ring, said the telephone.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘I have a call for Sol Mazzaroth from Herman Orff.’

  ‘I was just calling you,’ said Lucretia. ‘I have Sol Mazzaroth for you.’

  ‘Hi, Sol.’

  ‘Just a moment, please,’ she said.

  ‘Then you haven’t really got him, have you.’ I hung up again. This time I took the phone off the hook.

  After a while I rang up Istvan Fallok. Behind him I heard the Hermes music again. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I
need another fix.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’

  ‘The way you freaked out the first time, there’s no telling what a second jolt might trigger off. And for all I know I could be had up for practising EEG without a licence.’

  ‘You’re the one that got me hooked. Don’t chicken out on me now.’

  ‘You’ve got funny ideas about what constitutes chickening out. Some people might say you were chickening out when you tried to get a novel out of your head with a machine.’

  ‘At least I’m man enough not to lay off the Orpheus action on somebody else and give them angina.’

  ‘Then I’m sure you’re man enough to carry on alone. Now if you don’t mind I have to get back to what I’m doing.’

  ‘Don’t we all,’ I said as I stared at the wordless monitor.

  THINK OF ME AS I THINK OF YOU, said the Kraken.

  Last time you didn’t want me to think of you. You were afraid you might be real.

  I AM REAL. I KNOW NOW THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO EXIST WITHOUT BEING REAL. THINK OF ME.

  Why do you want me to think of you?

  I WANT TO BE MORE REAL.

  Why?

  IT’S IN THE NATURE OF THINGS.

  I do think of you. I have always thought of you, I’ve told you that before.

  HOW HAVE YOU THOUGHT OF ME? WHAT IS THE FORM OF ME IN YOUR THOUGHTS?

  I told you that the first time we spoke.

  TELL ME AGAIN.

  I think of you as the great cephalopod, ancient of the deeps. I think of you as the great thinking head in the blackness of the ultimate deep, I think of you as the Kraken.

  AND THE LITTLE CHILDREN? YOU SPOKE OF LITTLE CHILDREN THE FIRST TIME.

  Even little children have an idea of you in their minds. They draw a great head with all the limbs growing out of it.

  VAST AND WRITHING.

  Actually they mostly draw your limbs thin and gangling.

  BUT I AM VAST AND WRITHING.

  Yes, of course.

  WHEN DID YOU BEGIN TO THINK OF ME?

  For as long as my mind has been you have been in my mind. Always have I heard the circles of your terror widening in the deeps but it was the head of Orpheus I wanted to talk to really.

  YOU KNOW THAT I’M THE UNDERHEAD, I’M DEEPER THAN THE HEAD OF ORPHEUS.

  Yes. I have to go out now. We’ll talk soon.

  I switched off the monitor. Whenever the Kraken and I spoke in words on the screen I experienced a surge of terror at the centre of me that was comfortable and familiar, I felt as if I’d always known the Kraken and I knew that we always told each other the truth. With the head of Orpheus things were always awkward and it was by its own admission unreliable but I felt a strong need to talk to it. I couldn’t think of any reason to go out but there weren’t any bananas in the house so I went to the North End Road market.

  ‘Look, look!’ shouted a man. ‘Look at this cabbage! Get yourself a head, you never know when you’ll need one!’ It was the gom yawncher man from the Cheshire Cheese who’d also been the broken-brimmed-hat man in the underground. ‘Look, look!’ he shouted.

  I looked. There it was, green-slimed and barnacled among the lawful fruit and vegetables on the barrow. Its mouth was open and speaking. ‘Swaying, swaying their tops against the sky the trees came down to the water’s edge,’ said the head of Orpheus, ‘and I found her there in the mottled sunlight and the leafy shade by the river.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘not here!’ To the gom yawncher man I said, ‘I’ll have this one.’

  ‘Sixty-five p for the thinking man’s cabbage head,’ he said as he weighed it and wrapped it up in page three of the Sun, ‘with a visual treat thrown in.’

  ‘You remember me, don’t you?’ I said. ‘From the underground and the Cheshire Cheese?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ he said.

  As I hurried home through the people and the traffic the head continued its story. I had to hold it close to my ear to hear what it was saying, ‘In the leafy shade she lay all huddled and forlorn, the red-gold hair, the ivory of her in the cool and leafy shade by the river, her garments all disordered offering to the eye her shapeliness, her long and rounded limbs; splendid and sculptural she was, like a broken winged victory. The honeyed air droned and sang; the ivory of her, the pathetic and savage splendour of her beauty sang in my eyes as I knelt beside her. Gone she was and lost to me for ever, Eurydice! Eurydice!’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ I said. ‘How can she be gone and lost to you for ever when you haven’t even met her yet?’

  ‘Where was I?’ said the head. ‘Where did I leave off last time?’

  ‘You heard the unseen woman weeping by the river and you became the world-child and the tortoise you’d killed. Underworld opened to you and you sang and blood came out of your mouth and your nose.’

  ‘Yes. Weeping, weeping in the golden afternoon her voice came to me in the mottled sunlight by the river and I went to where she lay all huddled and forlorn, the red-gold hair, the ivory of her in the cool and leafy shade by the river, her garments all disordered offering to the eye her shapeliness, her long and rounded limbs; splendid and sculptural she was, like a broken winged victory. The honeyed air droned and sang, the ivory of her, the pathetic and savage splendour of her beauty sang in my eyes as I knelt beside her. She looked at me not as one looks at a stranger but as if she expected me to comfort her. Full of desire and uncertainty I took her in my arms. She smelled of honey, it was like a dream, there was no strangeness in it; there already seemed to be a long history between us.’ The head lapsed into silence.

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Go on with what?’

  ‘With what happened when you found Eurydice weeping in the leafy shade.’

  ‘We made love.’

  ‘Didn’t you say anything first? Surely you didn’t just jump on her without a word?’

  ‘I don’t know what I said at first.’

  ‘You probably said, “Why are you crying?’”

  ‘That was it,’ said the head. ‘I said, “Why are you crying?”

  ‘“I was sleeping,” she said, “and I dreamed that I was the whole world; the whole world had become me and I was a child and I was afraid.” She was still trembling as she clung to me.

  ‘“Did you hear me singing by the river?” I said.

  ‘“In my dream there came around me all the strange and many colours of death,” she said. “They took my hands and wanted me to dance with them and I was afraid.’” Here again the head fell silent.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘what did you say to that?’

  ‘I kissed her,’ said the head. ‘She tasted of honey.’

  ‘“You taste of blood,” she said.

  ‘“Something happened in my throat when I sang,” I said. But again she ignored my mention of the singing. I don’t remember what she said after that.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘It hurts to remember.’

  ‘Yes, but without remembering we have nothing.’

  ‘She said, “Be the world-child with me,’” said the head.

  At that moment some large schoolboys lurched violently into me, I dropped the head, and one of the boys kicked it into the road. Several cars passed before I could go after it, and by then there was no sign of it anywhere.

  10 All Hallows by the Tower

  I spent the rest of the day typing up everything so far which brought me to this page. Several times the telephone rang and I could hear Lucretia stamping her booted foot inside it but I didn’t answer.

  In the evening, the evening after seeing Melanie Falsepercy and Istvan Fallok at the Cheshire Cheese, I went there again. I arrived a little after seven; that was about the time they’d come in. I sat down at the same table I’d sat at before and placed myself so as to have a good view of the door.

  In my mind she arrived at a quarter past seven, smiled tentatively and looked
at me with her woodland look as I stood up. She came over to the table, I pulled out a chair for her and helped her out of her coat. I was overwhelmed by the actuality of her. Like Luise she was taller than I; she smelled of youth and miracles, of November darkness and hibiscus lamplight.

  Hello, she said as she sat down in my mind in the chair that stood empty before me. Here I am. Did you think I’d come?

  The gom yawncher man, making his rounds, smiled at me and said, ‘Numsy fy?’

  ‘It’s too soon to say,’ I said. ‘It’s all in my mind.’ I went out into Crutched Friars, turned right, turned left, followed a sign that pointed to St Olave’s Church, crossed a big road full of blackness and white headlamps, fetched up at All Hallows by the Tower and went inside.

  It seemed a working church in good order, and the many models in the Mariners’ Chapel in the south aisle gave it a pleasantly practical air. There was a Communion service going on but a sign in the south aisle indicated that one might pray privately in the Chapel of St Francis in the crypt.

  Going down the stairs I came first to the tiny dim Oratory of St Clare in which were two chairs and two prie-dieux facing a small Romanesque window with a grille in front of it. Beyond the window in a lighted alcove was an unlit brass oil lamp of the sort that Aladdin rubbed. This one stood on a rather tall foot and the handle of it was in the form of the chi-rho monogram. I sat down in one of the chairs and mentally rubbed the lamp.

  There was a clip-clopping on the staircase and a stirring in the air, winter-sharp and woodlandish.

  ‘Hello,’ said Melanie Falsepercy as she sat down beside me. ‘Here I am. Did you think I’d come?’

  Thank you, I said to the lamp. ‘I wasn’t expecting you at All Hallows,’ I said to her.

  ‘I followed you here from the Cheshire Cheese,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t see you when I was there.’

  ‘I was outside standing under the bridge, skulking in the shadows.’

  ‘But why didn’t you come in?’

  ‘It wasn’t coming-in time, it was skulking-in-the-shadows time.’