As for her cousin, who had joined them at table, he was definitely one of the neuro-anthropologist’s less successful outcomes. This evening, Jethro Swai-Phillips was part-way between his two impairments: he could move his crabbed right hand — although he accidentally dabbed it in the gravy — but couldn’t prevent himself from intermittently slurring: ‘Heesh the ma-an!’
Tom speculated: had Jethro had his oppo recently? Or was his violated brain mysteriously reacting to the enviroment itself? Back in Vance, Jethro had been such a vivid character — decisive, self-possessed, the courtroom colossus of the Tropics. Yet, Tom now understood, the lawyer had always been serving this other, far more heavyweight client.
Was this why Martha had reacted so vehmently to him? Tom shook his muzzy head, desperate to gain purchase. But it was no good; he’d never be able to get a grip on the conundrum of his wife’s intentions; the well-oiled links of the chains that dragged effects behind her causes simply slid through his hands.
What was it Jethro had said, sitting under his hunting prints in his office at the top of the Metro-Center? That it didn’t matter a damn if Tom began smoking again — that the entire apparatus of prohibition was solely a product of race politics?
Tonight, the dense tobacco smoke alone identified the chalet as the command centre of the insurgency. Long pennants of it furled and unfurled in the warm draughts. A particularly thick standard of pipe smoke was draped behind Von Sasser’s chair, and now, rallying to it, the neuro-anthropologist addressed his staff, who, with the exception of Tom and Prentice, were working their way through big wedges of Black Forest Gateau, slathered with cream.
‘You cannot conceive’, the rhetorician of Ralladayo began, ‘of a cannibal sending back his enemy pie simply to avoid a statutory fine or a short term of imprisonment, any more than a Parsee would forgo the excarnation of his mum, or an Inuit his hunt for the narwhal’s tusk — but this, yeah, is precisely what the Anglos have done.
‘I’m not saying that this is all t’do with smoking, right, but you’ve gotta admit it’s pretty bloody key. Y’see,’ he said, shaking his hatchet head incredulously, ‘that’s the way an Anglo thinks — that’s the way he conceives of himself. He thinks: I’m giving up smoking and that’s a good thing; it’s such a bloody good thing that I better go looking for some other poor bastard I can impose it on. No, it’s this — this imposition, this sixteen-metre line we all haveta stand beyond, because we’re bad little boys and girls, that my father — and now me — have dedicated our entire lives to getting rid of, yeah.
‘I’m not saying, yeah. .’ But he was saying, and saying, and bloody saying some more, his sharp words cutting into Tom’s very flesh, his bloody convictions splattering the lapels of Tom’s crumpled, sky-blue suit. ‘. . I’m not saying that what we do here isn’t similar — that’s bloody obvious! We come from the same bloody tradition. But see, when me and Vishtar do an oppo, yeah, we’re not simply imposing our idea of the good, we’re turning people into living, breathing, walking-bloody-instruments — instruments that can hear a voice right inside their heads telling them, loud and clear, what they should actually bloody do!
‘Y’see’ — relighting his hideous pipe, Von Sasser dribbled smoke — ‘you’ve gotta fight fire with bloody fire.’
But Tom Brodzinski didn’t see this at all. What he did see — and what he cleaved to, even now — was that the best thing he had done in years — perhaps in his entire life — had been to give up smoking. He felt much better, despite his current weakened state; indeed, if he hadn’t quit, Tom felt sure he would now be seriously ill — what with the stress and the fatigue, and the sheer monotony of listening, for hour after hour, to this insane man lecture his lobotomized confrères.
Tom thrashed in smoky whirlpools, struggling to stay afloat on the wreckage of his reasoning, but it was no use — he shouldn’t have had that last schnapps, and so he submerged into unconsciousness. .
. . And popped back up to be dashed with song spray:
This golden realm of unutterable promise. .
We give it to you, O Lord, our country,
We give. . it. . to. . you-ooo. .!
The lamps had long since been lit and now burned down low. The paraffin fumes were choking, the tobacco smoke was stale, and the meat was already putrefying between the gaping teeth from which these words spewed. They were all standing to attention behind their chairs. Prentice even had his hand on his heart. His angular Adam’s apple bobbed as he sang, stretching the smooth healthy skin of his neck.
They finished the anthem. There were tears in Gloria’s eyes, and Von Sasser’s, the latter said: ‘There she blows! Poor bugger’s had a skinful of grog, you better get him to his swag, Brian, yeah.’
Tom had no real awareness of the walk back to the derelict College; nor of Prentice, once again, readying him for bed. He switched off the lights and shut the door, but, as soon as Tom shut his eyes, he found himself back out in the dusty corridor, together with Tommy Junior, who mooched up and down puffing a cigarette. What was the slob of a teenager doing? Cutting class was one thing — but smoking in the school; that wasn’t merely delinquent, it was insane. Tom would’ve berated his adoptive son — as he had so many times before — with his lack of concern for anyone’s feelings other than his own, were it not for the uncomfortable fact that what the boy was smoking was Tom himself.
Tommy Junior stuck Tom’s feet in his mouth and slobbered on them: a suck of incestuous satisfaction. His father’s head burned with shame. Then the boy pinched Tom’s legs, hard, and flipped him. Tom flew, end over end over end, yet never reached the end of the dusty corridor; while up ahead the woman that was Martha, that was Atalaya, that was Gloria — that was all of them — turned and turned and turned the corner, avoiding him for an eternity, her words floating back, over and over, to her rejected spouse: ‘I’m scared, honey. I’m scared. .’
It was still early when Prentice came to wake him. When they got outside the Technical College, the first dull light of the pre-dawn showed up the sloppy grin on Prentice’s face. He had changed his clothes as well as his complexion; the slogan on his too-tight, white T-shirt read NEXT PUB 859 KMS. He must’ve scored last night and the T-shirt is his sick trophy. . Prentice took Tom’s hand and led him into the eucalyptus grove.
As they walked towards the dispensary, he prattled away: ‘Have you ever noticed, old chap, how the water here goes down the plughole the other way? Y’know, anti-clockwise. I’m not good at expressing myself at all, but it did occur to me that this was a sort of meta-thingy.’
‘Metaphor.’
‘That’s it, metaphor — for what’s happened to me. I mean, a good deal of pressure was applied, don’t get me wrong. Jethro told me I’d be seeing the inside of the old prison walls. Then there’s the racialism thing. Well, I’d be the first to admit that my, um, standpoint — rumpy-pumpy aside — was pretty old-fashioned, but, well. .’ He laughed. ‘Seeing your behaviour — how crass you were — and then meeting my own children for the first time. . Well, it turned me completely round, twisted me anti-clockwise. Now I believe in what I’ve done, Tom. It’s like Erich says: it doesn’t matter what my intentions were, I was a good tool.’