The Man Who Travelled on Motorways Page 5
The man wore a cleaner’s brown smock. The cuffs were ragged and the hem had come undone, hanging down. The man’s complexion was further darkened by a heavy growth of stubble. His face wore almost a smile, and his shadowed eyes were piercingly keen.
‘I can only repeat that I’m sorry, sir,’ the cleaner said. He leaned on his mop. ‘You must admit that it’s very late to be working.’
‘The kind of work I do,’ I responded coldly, ‘requires to be done very late in the evening.’
The cleaner came near to me, holding his mop. ‘The same can be said for me,’ he replied. Then, ‘Does your work also require you to go on long journeys?’
‘What if it does?’
The cleaner lowered his eyes and smiled. His hands were clasped round the mop handle. ‘I’ve seen you in the mornings, sir, very early, on a number of occasions.’ He added, almost apologetically, ‘I’m in the building myself before five.’
‘Do you want my sympathy?’ I said, becoming irritated with the fellow. ‘Is that why you disturb me? Is that why you question me? Why don’t you go about your business?’
‘We have all of us a crust to earn,’ the cleaner said enigmatically.
I was growing more and more vexed with him. ‘Look here, if it was your intention to make a nuisance of yourself, you have succeeded. First you disturb me and then go on to ask questions about my personal life. It so happens that I do go on a number of long journeys, to London, Reading, Immingham and various other places. Does that satisfy your curiosity?’
Once again the cleaner seemed to smile, a half-hidden smile that he attempted to conceal. ‘I’m sorry if I have in any way distressed you,’ he said.
‘You haven’t distressed me in the slightest,’ I corrected him. ‘It would take far more than your meaningless questions to distress me. Now if you will excuse me – ’
Without waiting for his reply I re-entered the office and closed the door. The trouble with modern life is that there is no privacy.
Beneath the bright lamp lay the heaped transparencies, the light catching their acetate surfaces through the frosted packets. What was one to make of them? There was even a shot – indeed several shots – of a crumbling boarding house, a dank, narrow passageway, and a congealing back room. Now in what situation or circumstance had Dmitri found himself which enabled him to photograph such scenes? They constituted a blatant intrusion of private reminiscences. And here: here was another, showing, of all things, the very office in which I sat! This really was too much.
The bucket clattered distantly down the corridor and there came the sound of running water. I secretly hoped that the cleaner had upset filthy water all over his handiwork; it would teach him to respect silence more. It was quite clear (to me, at least) that he hadn’t paid the slightest attention to my admonishment. So much for the modern habit of displacing service with incivility, manners with the morals of a dog, and restraint with a lackadaisical disregard for fellow humanity. It would serve him right if his bucket developed a hole.
Presently I calmed down. I reasoned to myself that it was futile to become annoyed over things one did not understand. The world was a mysterious, magical place with dark forces moving stealthily along its lower strata, and who was I to doubt the logic of this or to seek to interpret and explain it? Besides, I had enough on my plate. The worry of what to do with the colour transparencies was reaching intolerable proportions. Additionally I was at a loss as to how Dmitri had managed to accumulate the material in front of me in the first place. Certainly he had covered the paper mill assignment with exceptional thoroughness, right down to such details as the room of slapping pulleys, the dust-laden galleries, and the myriad tubes, ducting and pipework. And here was a surprise if ever there was one: an out-of-focus shot in the wrong colour register of the Italian sipping beer from a lipstick-stained glass. The exposure was so bad and the colour so muddy that the man might have been mistaken for almost anybody, Shirl’s boyfriend, or even the cleaner down the corridor. It was plainly ridiculous on Dmitri’s part to expect me to make anything at all of such an ambiguous effort.
Seating myself at the desk – but no; suddenly seizing my coat I ran out of the building and went directly to a bar to which I was not altogether a stranger. We mortals find solace at times like these in the company of others. This was a dilapidated place. The attempt had been made to make it a fashionable drinking spot: the usual shabby plastic seat coverings and masked fluorescent lighting, the cheap chairs and scratched formica tables; there was an air of desperate second-rate unease that gave one grubby hands even to enter the fanciful door and order a drink. I sat in a dark corner, a solitary figure, shunning the crowd making believe it was having a good time. The girls were cheap here. They carried their bra-less bodies like premium offers. Had I not been so repelled by them I could have taught them a lesson.
As the evening grew late I consumed a considerable amount of liquor and before long my head was buzzing with noise and my face felt rubbery. In the darkened booths teenage lovers sat crushed in pairs, their hands in each other’s laps. The table-tops swam with beer. In and out of the crowd ran the uncouth waiters, tall, slender, with stained white jackets. So befuddled was I that I didn’t notice when a young person sat down opposite me, and it was only after a certain time had elapsed that I became aware of his persistent gaze. His brown eyes stared at me out of a blank face; from the threadbare sleeves of his overcoat emerged two thin white wrists from which hands sprouted like ungainly red cabbages. Plainly he wished to converse with me. He licked his raw lips and began:
‘It was necessary for ma to come to Manchester this evening.’
Not knowing how I should react to this I remained silent.
‘I came on the bus,’ the young man continued. ‘It would have been easier in a car but I came on the bus.’
There was something in his manner that was rather disquieting. My head sang with alcohol. The bar was well-known for half-wits, simpletons, liars, cheats and other assorted riff-raff: was this young person to be included amongst them?
‘Why was it necessary to come?’ I enquired.
‘To see Kim Novak.’
Unaccountably I found myself unable to respond to this statement. The young man didn’t flicker. We sat looking at one another, and at length it was I who was forced to lower my eyes. A sort of feverishness, a helpless frenzy, gripped my brain, and the heat of the room became suddenly stifling. I ventured to ask him, ‘Is she in Manchester?’
‘Oh yes,’ he replied confidently.
‘Where?’
‘At the Studios.’
‘Which studios?’
‘Behind the Stores.’
At this we lapsed into silence. It occured to me that the young man was an odd character. He had about him an unhealthy appearance, and yet why he had sought out me, of all people, to confide his desires and aspirations to was a facet of our relationship I found puzzling. Why, also, should he want to see Kim Novak? What possible reason could he have? Were they acquainted, I wondered?
‘Why do you want to see Kim Novak?’ I found myself asking. If the truth were known it annoyed me to think that this weedy specimen of a creature should consider himself a superior personage. Physically he was degenerate, wearing shoddy clothes and old shoes. His hair stuck out of his head. Whatever Kim Novak might see in him wasn’t apparent to me.
‘To talk to her,’ the young man said without expression. ‘Just to talk to her.’
‘And she’s at the Studios.’
‘Behind the Stores.’
‘Is she expecting you?’
The young man stared at me. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
That was a thought.
‘You could show me where it is,’ the young man said.
I didn’t like the sound of this. Why should he suppose that I knew the whereabouts of the Studios? I didn’t, as it happened; and if he had travelled all the way to Manchester without knowing their precise location it didn’t seem to me that he wa
s the kind of person one could put one’s faith in. Altogether a peculiar fellow. The reputation the bar had acquired for harbouring such species was not undeserved – or so it seemed in my humble opinion.
I beckoned to the waiter and ordered more to drink. Even at that moment I realised that this was so foolish as to not bear examination, but I am driven to push my life to extremes when a victim of my own depressive states. Due to my acute sensitivity I find it impossible to live in permanent consciousness of what I am and the actions I envisage. (Naturally I never do anything; it is the pure thought of the possibilities of those actions that I am anxious to obliterate.)
At any rate we drank together and in no time at all my head was spinning. I clutched at the table to prevent myself from falling. I perceived that the young man was somewhat disgusted by my conduct.
‘Why do you behave in such a fashion?’ he asked me, his white unremarkable face stiffening. ‘Do you suppose that it amuses people to see you like this?’
‘Do you think I care for the opinions of others?’ I returned sharply. My speech was becoming slurred. ‘I detest charlatans, fools, and the empty fripperies of life. Do you think,’ I said, sweeping my arm over the crowded tables and at the room in general, ‘that any of this impresses me? Do you think I am envious of such goings-on? Ha!’ I exclaimed, my sleeve dipping in the beer, ‘I would rather retire now, this instant, to my little dark hole than stay and witness all this meaninglessness.’
To this outburst the young man said nothing, apparently stunned into silence. I say ‘apparently’ because there was some difficulty in detecting any actual change in his demeanour; his passivity under all circumstances remained intact and under strict control.
‘What do these people know of life?’ I demanded, continuing my tirade. Accidentally I knocked over some bottles with my elbow, sending them tumbling unheeded to the floor. ‘They seek after pleasure as though life had nothing more to offer. They are vain, foolish, hedonistic dunderheads who cannot distinguish between good and bad because such words have no meaning for them. Whereas I – I – ’
Speech temporarily failed me, and in desperation I took hold of the glass in front of me and drained its contents in a single draught. The young man had begun to mutter through clenched lips, but such was the pandemonium in the hot, low room that he might have been uttering gibberish for all the sense I could get out of it. I could not decide whether he was agreeing with me or pursuing some abstracted line of thought of his own choosing, therefore I pressed on with increased determination and vigour:
‘The second point I should like to make concerns the nature of the good and bad previously referred to – how are we to distinguish the reality, the essence, of these qualities if we do not experience them? These people here’ – again I swept out my arm – ‘have no comprehension of “the good and the beautiful” because, precisely because, they are amoral creatures living their lives without purpose or motivation. Indeed, their lives are lived in the full glare of the incomprehensible, and not comprehending this they are mindless innocents to whom the dark inner core of truth is forever hidden.’ My heart was beating painfully inside me. I was giddy with alcohol and semi-exhaustion, yet the blood was racing through my arteries with the exhilaration of my own rhetoric. ‘Do you not see – do you now see – why it is imperative for us to experience all things? Why we must seek out the filth and the squalor, wallow in the dregs of life, so that our sensibilities are awakened and we become creatures of choice instead of unthinking appetite?’
The young man had stopped muttering. His brown eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon me.
‘Can you direct me to the Studios?’ he mouthed through pale lips. The condition of his face was apathetic.
I went on, ‘In speaking of life I mean, of course, “the self”. For life is nothing until we perceive it. During my various searches and nightdrives I have uncovered much that would perhaps have been better left covered – but as a man do I not have an obligation, a duty almost, to establish that which is true and meaningful, at least by my own definition of those terms?
‘Take, if you will, those men of the twentieth century to whom order was the state to which we should aspire. Could they not see that in this universe two and two make three? Possibly five; perhaps even nine?’
‘Two and two is a simple sum,’ the young man said.
‘Yes of course it is,’ I agreed, ‘for those who have eyes to see. But you misinterpret my point—’
‘Then where are the Stores?’ asked the young man with a heavy finality.
I had no idea what the idiot was babbling about. I had never heard of ‘the Stores’ in all my life. Did he expect me to go out into the prowling streets of Manchester, with all its inherent dangers, to help him find a place whose existence I doubted? What did he take me for? No sensible person would be seen dead off the main roads at this time of night.
‘If you do not go soon you will never find them,’ I found myself saying. Since he would not listen to me I would take no further interest in him. I do not suffer fools gladly.
The bar was even more crowded than before. (It might have been less crowded but in fact it was not.) The more crowded bar was filled with people to whom death meant nothing. Neither, in my opinion, were they worth saving. Anger and bitterness welled up inside me because they wore smart, expensive clothes, while mine were stained and tattered. Yet I knew that they could not hope to keep up the facade for long: once the perspiration broke through the crust of cleanliness they would revert back to the stinking human condition from which none of us can escape. I had never left it, nor wanted to leave it, because to do so was merely covering a cess-pit with a bed of roses. The humour of their predicament lay in the fact that they were apeing an electronic image behind which did not exist a basis of reality. They did not know that many hours of preparation were needed to project a figment of mass consciousness; and that by living up to a myth they were perpetuating their own unreality. Just as an impressive granite building, gleaming like a white shock in the sun, has underneath its foundations a labyrinth of sewers, so the one inescapable truth about their stainless steel lives was that, sooner or later, at one time or another, they were obliged to defecate.
Watching them now I was torn by the conflicting passions of amused hatred, rabid scorn, pity, and self-annihilating envy. Yes, I must confess it – envy. But what was there to be envious about? My one self was equal to any ten of them, and as I so despised their mean, empty lives it was all the more surprising that I should wish to emulate their kind of crude, superficial existence. So this is contact with people, I remember thinking to myself. I have ventured out of my little dark hole for this. Good God, I was worse (being wise) than they were!
Finally, being tired of my obsessive thoughts, and having drunk myself into a near stupor, I fastened my coat and went out into the night. It was black, black, and ice-cold. I walked along under the clattering stars, befuddled to the point of exhaustion. The planet spun beneath my feet. How many more nights like this before death came? I had lived vicariously through all the ages of mankind, arriving at this, the ultimate point in time, when there was nothing in the world left to experience.
VI
The days leading up to the central event around which this narrative revolves are vague in my memory, as are the exact reasons that brought about this trauma of alienation. The moment itself, however, and the subsequent happenings, are etched into my brain cells like acid into copper.
One of the primary sensory recollections is of a large blood-red sun hanging sullenly in front of my eyes, a fiery though perfectly tranquil hole in the sky. It was about six o’clock in the evening and I had just eaten a meal that had stuck fast in my gullet. The sky was clear, almost white, and the petrol fumes were tumbling sluggishly along the gutters. Somewhere, not many miles away, trees would be sending rubber shadows across oily roads.
I had it in mind to get drunk. Driving through the disconcerting sunshine my thoughts were aimless and sad. It
didn’t seem feasible that the breath I was at that moment expelling wouldn’t be my last. Not that this perturbed me, for I knew myself to be immortal.
Stopping at a certain pub I drank a double brandy straight down. The landlord regarded me suspiciously, detecting a tensile strain in me. He thought my face would splinter into fragments, the glass would crack in my hand, and the air would be rent in two.
Later that same evening I found myself in a strange predicament. The sun was as yet in the sky, illuminating an apartment house at which I hoped to find accommodation for the night. Having stocked up with the minimal provisions I entered the run-down building via the front door, only to find that I was in the wrong place. By some odd mischance I had stumbled into a scene from somebody else’s life.
The room in which I now stood was perfectly bleak, its solitary window overlooking some shrubbery and a gravel path. Scattered about the room were items of furniture, and in an alcove behind a sagging curtain stood a filthy gas stove, spent matches embedded in its greasy surface. It struck an echo deep within my consciousness. I wondered who lived, or had lived, in the room. Could it have been me? Was this possibly the little dark hole of which I was so fond of speaking?
The floor was of particular interest: pieces of broken linoleum, green with mildew, were tastefully arranged at discreet intervals so as to convey the impression of artless congeniality. The upright bed, hinged for lowering into position, revealed its springs. There were mice-droppings in the corner. The room was so engagingly familiar that I became quite enchanted with it. For a moment I thought that it might be a film set, but as this wasn’t a film the possibility seemed rather remote. Could it have been a visual reverberation from a remote past; or some other life that had slipped into a crevice of the unconscious? A mislaid cassette, perhaps? The idea had potential.
Presently I departed from the room, and in the short passageway leading to the front door happened to glance into another room where a girl was sitting comfortably by the fire. The look of her was vaguely familiar, yet I was certain I had never set eyes on her before, I knew that she would turn towards me and smile, which she did, and I knew also that I would stand and stare, wishing to project myself into the warmth and comfort of her room, a bow-windowed front room through whose lacy curtains the sun was eternally rising. Thus for a single long moment of time we gazed at one another; whether or not she too was aware that we had met in dreams I could not discern, but at any rate it was evident that she was not what I had hitherto supposed her to be, a figment of my imagination.