surfs across the vinyl peaks before dropping into exactly the same trough, compelling Michael to a prayer: I call to thee . . which turns into a curse: O Lord Christ! Transfixed, he watches as Claude swats a hole in the misty sound and stretches out his hand: The five peninsular fingers of Hee-ro-sheema! he intones liturgically, Where the T-shaped bridge marked the spot they aimed at. — Michael croaks, Who. . Who are you? And Claude flings back at him, Who’re YOU, the Archangel Michael, p’raps, come to smite us all with your sword of righteousness? Michael winces, but pushes on: No, I’m determined to have an answer from you, my man: who are you? Because I’m bloody well certain you aren’t who you claim to be — Doctor Gourevitch here says you were the target-spotter for the Enola Gay, but I was one of the British observers, and I never heard of any Evenrude flying with the 509th. That’s what you said, isn’t it, Gourevitch, you said Claude here was on the A-bomb mission? — From a long way away, pan-piping over the bluing recession of successive horizons, which are at once those seen during his childhood vacations in Vermont and the fleshy contours of a new and fantastical organ, Roger hears the Englishman’s question — however, to answer it is utterly impossible, because he’s standing — together with John and Zack — beneath the flying buttresses supporting the roof of the Kid’s mouth, looking up at the great arch of his teeth. Their feet are buried in the squishy pile of papillae on the Kid’s tongue — a tongue that rises and falls as the annihilating clamour fills their tiny ears: No-thing, no-thing, no-thing. . Claude says, I’m Lieutenant Claude Evenrude, retired, of the United States Army Air Force. — Evenrude. Michael mulls it over — syllables it out, Ev-en-rude, Claude, then expostulates: I’ve got it! There was a Claude Ea-ther-ly on the mission, and he was the target-spotter. A Texan chap — a hard-drinker, a gambler — a big, raw-boned fellow, looked nothing like you. . What you people called a hot-shot pilot, but he went on to become something of an alcoholic, I believe. . in and out of asylums — I barely spoke to him when we were on Tinian, but he wrote to me later — in the fifties. He’d become a sort of peacenik — speaking out against the bomb. Not altogether advisable, given the climate at the time. He stops, regarding Claude with dismay: You don’t mean to say you’re. . you’re impersonating him? — A SNICK, a YAWP and an agonised slide as the needle, having hit the obstruction, surfs again across the vinyl peaks before dropping into exactly the same trough. The music wells up and Claude. . floats towards me: I am, he reiterates, Lieutenant Claude Evenrude, retired, of the United States Army Air Force. I met Claude Eatherly in 1957 in the Clearwater Hospital for the criminally insane in Rosemont, Illinois. He wasn’t a happy man — his conscience burdened him. I wasn’t happy either: the war had dumped an ashcan on me — the Torpex was still burning in my hair. . on my skin. . Claude’s hands go to his hair, divert to his necklace, he toys with this, gathering bear claw and trannie, Tibetan amulet and tin opener, into the scallop shell as he perseveres: You got it about right there — Eatherly had been writing to peace campaigners. He’d invitations to visit with them here in Europe and in Japan, but he was screwed — he’d been convicted for a stick-up. . Claude edges forward and kneels — Michael wonders what’s going to happen. . some violence he suspects, yet he’s powerless to evade it. Close to, Claude’s face can be witnessed in all its haggard splendour: lucidity has smoothed the careworn wrinkles. Shorn of his madness he’s. . a kindly-looking man, sheep-faced, and with the high colour of a sherry-tippling vicar. Claude says, We — and it was a completely mutual decision — thought it might be advantageous to both of us if I were to, uh, avail myself of these opportunities in his stead. . Claude’s diction is professorial and compelling. The shrapnel buried in Michael’s shoulder. . goads me: That’s a hell of a bloody coincidence, isn’t it — you and him, with almost identical names, both flyers, both in the same hospital. D’you really expect me to believe any of this balderdash? — A snap, a quack and a despairing wail as the needle, having hit some obstruction, aquaplanes across the soundsea, then tips over into the same evanescent dip. Claude says, Ich ruf ’ zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ. . We went to Germany before the war, y’know, my father and I. . In many ways Pop was an unspeakable vulgarian, but he knew his music. It was around ’31, I guess — we went on the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line, which sailed from a pier on the North River. . In Bremen we saw Parsifal — Pop called it a Ludwigian extravaganza. . The singing was strong, I guess — but to me the thing was interminable, and the staging cheesy beyond belief: the goofy fool scaled the cardboard walls of Klingsor’s castle, then shot a cardboard swan with an arrow on a goddamn string — I could see the string. Then, when he opened his fat Kraut mouth to sing about it, there was this one gold tooth in there catching the spotlight and sending these gleams bouncing all over the auditorium. . Claude falls silent. . Leastways, that’s the way I remember it — ’though the important thing to hold on to is. . the sea. Pop had weathered the crash just dandy. No perspicacity on his part: the trust had been locked down solid, bolted to the deck. . Anyway, he splashed out on a stateroom — every morning I opened the blinds and saw the wide Atlantic — all of it in constant motion, and yet. . at the same time. . totally still. — Claude’s advancement has been imperceptible — minute knee-shuffles, subtle shoulder-hunchings and torso-curlings — but he’s now arrived beside Michael, his back to the wall, his legs outstretched, and he inquires — much as any idler would of his fellow — How’s about you — you being here. . and now. I mean, it’s a heck of a stretch, ain’t it? You being, so to speak, the perpetrator, and me the victim — you flying high, the avenging Archangel Michael, and me down there in the burning water with all the screaming skin angels. . Wh-What’re you saying? Michael chokes out. What d’you know about the sk-skin angels? Claude clears his throat: a sharp glottal pop! followed by a seagull squawk as the needle — having encountered some obstruction — rips through the euphonious grooviness . . and drops, once more, into. . the Kid’s mouth, the saliva-streaked soft palate and softer cheeks of which are lined with gallery upon gallery of more mouths, mouths receding further and further into the dark gullet — mouths opened so wide their jaws dislocate with a vile crepitating sound as they scream this unspeakable repudiation: NO-THING! NO-THING! NO-THING! to no one and. . everyone. Jumbled up together in the scuppers behind the Kid’s front teeth, Zack somehow untangles himself from the flailing of Roger and Lesley. Th-This is abso-so-so-lutely d-dreadful, he manages to splutter. I–I m-must do s-something — I’ve g-got s-some M-Mogadon upstairs, if I c-can only g-get there! — Such is the mouthy howl and the screechy vibration of all these epiglottises that Zack assumes he must’ve shouted aloud, but beside him on the sofa, his face corpse-grey and sweaty, Roger gives no indication of. . having heard me at all! The effort of speaking effected this: the Kid has vomited us out, and the tempest lulls — the lino, the wallpaper, the ceiling tiles, all still drip and pulse menacingly. . but it’s recognisably a room