Good Bones Read online

  He sleeps and wakes, wakes and sleeps, and suddenly all is movement and suffering and terror and he is shot out gasping for breath into blinding light and a place that’s even more dangerous, where food is scarce and two enormous giants stand guard over his wooden prison. Shout as he might, rattle the bars, nobody comes to let him out. One of the giants is boisterous and hair-covered, with a big stick; the other walks more softly but has two enormous bulgy comforts which she selfishly refuses to detach and give away, to him. Neither of them looks anything like him, and their language is incomprehensible.

  Aliens! What can he do? And to make it worse, they surround him with animals – bears, rabbits, cats, giraffes – each one of them stuffed and, evidently, castrated, because although he looks and looks, all they have at best is a tail. Is this the fate the aliens have in store for him, as well?

  Where did I come from? he asks, for what will not be the first time. Out of me, the bulgy one says fondly, as if he should be pleased. Out of where? Out of what? He covers his ears, shutting out the untruth, the shame, the pulpy horror. It is not to be thought, it is not to be borne!

  No wonder that at the first opportunity he climbs out the window and joins a gang of other explorers, each one of them an exile, an immigrant, like himself. Together they set out on their solitary journeys.

  What are they searching for? Their homeland. Their true country. The place they came from, which can’t possibly be here.

  2.

  All men are created equal, as someone said who was either very hopeful or very mischievous. What a lot of anxiety could have been avoided if he’d only kept his mouth shut.

  Sigmund was wrong about the primal scene: Mom and Dad, keyhole version. That might be upsetting, true, but there’s another one:

  Five guys standing outside, pissing into a snowbank, a river, the underbrush, pretending not to look down. Or maybe not looking down: gazing upward, at the stars, which gives us the origin of astronomy. Anything to avoid comparisons, which aren’t so much odious as intimidating.

  And not only astronomy: quantum physics, engineering, laser technology, all numeration between zero and infinity. Something safely abstract, detached from you; a transfer of the obsession with size to anything at all. Lord, Lord, they measure everything: the height of the Great Pyramids, the rate of fingernail growth, the multiplication of viruses, the sands of the sea, the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. And then it’s only a short step to proving that God is a mathematical equation. Not a person. Not a body, Heaven forbid. Not one like yours. Not an earthbound one, not one with size and therefore pain.

  When you’re feeling blue, just keep on whistling. Just keep on measuring. Just don’t look down.

  3.

  The history of war is a history of killed bodies. That’s what war is: bodies killing other bodies, bodies being killed.

  Some of the killed bodies are those of women and children, as a side-effect you might say. Fallout, shrapnel, napalm, rape and skewering, anti-personnel devices. But most of the killed bodies are men. So are most of those doing the killing.

  Why do men want to kill the bodies of other men? Women don’t want to kill the bodies of other women. By and large. As far as we know.

  Here are some traditional reasons: Loot. Territory. Lust for power. Hormones. Adrenalin high. Rage. God. Flag. Honour. Righteous anger. Revenge. Oppression. Slavery. Starvation. Defence of one’s life. Love; or, a desire to protect the women and children. From what? From the bodies of other men.

  What men are most afraid of is not lions, not snakes, not the dark, not women. Not any more. What men are most afraid of is the body of another man.

  Men’s bodies are the most dangerous things on earth.

  4.

  On the other hand, it could be argued that men don’t have any bodies at all. Look at the magazines! Magazines for women have women’s bodies on the covers, magazines for men have women’s bodies on the covers. When men appear on the covers of magazines, it’s magazines about money, or about world news. Invasions, rocket launches, political coups, interest rates, elections, medical breakthroughs. Reality. Not entertainment. Such magazines show only the heads, the unsmiling heads, the talking heads, the decision-making heads, and maybe a little glimpse, a coy flash of suit. How do we know there’s a body, under all that discreet pinstriped tailoring? We don’t, and maybe there isn’t.

  What does this lead us to suppose? That women are bodies with heads attached, and men are heads with bodies attached? Or not, depending.

  You can have a body, though, if you’re a rock star, an athlete, or a gay model. As I said, entertainment. Having a body is not altogether serious.

  5.

  Or else too serious for words.

  The thing is: men’s bodies aren’t dependable. Now it does, now it doesn’t, and so much for the triumph of the will. A man is the puppet of his body, or vice versa. He and it make tomfools of each other: it lets him down. Or up, at the wrong moment. Just stare hard out the schoolroom window and recite the multiplication tables, and pretend this isn’t happening! Your face at least can be immobile. Easier to have a trained dog, which will do what you want it to, nine times out of ten.

  The other thing is: men’s bodies are detachable. Consider the history of statuary: the definitive bits get knocked off so easily, through revolution or prudery or simple transportation, with leaves stuck on for substitutes, fig or grape; or, in more northern climates, maple. A man and his body are soon parted.

  In the old old days, you became a man through blood. Through incisions, tattoos, splinters of wood; through an intimate wound, and the refusal to flinch. Through being beaten by older boys, in the dormitory, with a wooden paddle you were forced to carve yourself. The torments varied, but they were all torments. It’s a boy, they cry with joy. Let’s cut some off!

  Every morning I get down on my knees and thank God for not creating me a man. A man so chained to unpredictability. A man so much at the mercy of himself. A man so prone to sadness. A man who has to take it like a man. A man, who can’t fake it.

  In the gap between desire and enactment, noun and verb, intention and infliction, want and have, compassion begins.

  6.

  Bluebeard ran off with the third sister, intelligent though beautiful, and shut her up in his palace. Everything here is yours, my dear, he said to her. Just don’t open the small door. I will give you the key, however. I expect you not to use it.

  Believe it or not, this sister was in love with him, even though she knew he was a serial killer. She roamed over the whole palace, ignoring the jewels and the silk dresses and the piles of gold. Instead she went through the medicine cabinet and the kitchen drawers, looking for clues to his uniqueness. Because she loved him, she wanted to understand him. She also wanted to cure him. She thought she had the healing touch.

  But she didn’t find out a lot. In his closet there were suits and ties and matching shoes and casual wear, some golf outfits and a tennis racquet, and some jeans for when he wanted to rake up the leaves. Nothing unusual, nothing kinky, nothing sinister. She had to admit to being a little disappointed.

  She found his previous women quite easily. They were in the linen closet, neatly cut up and ironed flat and folded, stored in mothballs and lavender. Bachelors acquire such domestic skills. The women didn’t make much of an impression on her, except the one who looked like his mother. That one she took out with rubber gloves on and slipped into the incinerator in the garden. Maybe it was his mother, she thought. If so, good riddance.

  She read through his large collection of cookbooks, and prepared the dishes on the most-thumbed pages. At dinner he was politeness itself, pulling out her chair and offering more wine and leading the conversation around to topics of the day. She said gently that she wished he would talk more about his feelings. He said that if she had his feelings, she wouldn’t want to talk about them either. This intrigued her. She was now more in love with him and more curious than ever.

 
; Well, she thought, I’ve tried everything else; it’s the small door or nothing. Anyway, he gave me the key. She waited until he had gone to the office or wherever it was he went, and made straight for the small door. When she opened it, what should be inside but a dead child. A small dead child, with its eyes wide open.

  It’s mine, he said, coming up behind her. I gave birth to it. I warned you. Weren’t you happy with me?

  It looks like you, she said, not turning around, not knowing what else to say. She realized now that he was not sane in any known sense of the word, but she still hoped to talk her way out of it. She could feel the love seeping out of her. Her heart was dry ice.

  It is me, he said sadly. Don’t be afraid.

  Where are we going? she said, because it was getting dark, and there was suddenly no floor.

  Deeper, he said.

  7.

  Those ones. Why do women like them? They have nothing to offer, none of the usual things. They have short attention spans, falling-apart clothes, old beat-up cars, if any. The cars break down, and they try to fix them, and don’t succeed, and give up. They go on long walks from which they forget to return. They prefer weeds to flowers. They tell trivial fibs. They perform clumsy tricks with oranges and pieces of string, hoping desperately that someone will laugh. They don’t put food on the table. They don’t make money. Don’t, can’t, won’t.

  They offer nothing. They offer the great clean sweep of nothing, the unseen sky during a blizzard, the dark pause between moon and moon. They offer their poverty, an empty wooden bowl; the bowl of a beggar, whose gift is to ask. Look into it, look down deep, where potential coils like smoke, and you might hear anything. Nothing has yet been said.

  They have bodies, however. Their bodies are unlike the bodies of other men. Their bodies are verbalized. Mouth, eye, hand, foot, they say. Their bodies have weight, and move over the ground, step by step, like yours. Like you they roll in the hot mud of the sunlight, like you they are amazed by morning, like you they can taste the wind, like you they sing. Love, they say, and at the time they always mean it, as you do also. They can say lust as well, and disgust; you wouldn’t trust them otherwise. They say the worst things you have ever dreamed. They open locked doors. All this is given to them for nothing.

  They have their angers. They have their despair, which washes over them like grey ink, blanking them out, leaving them immobile, in metal kitchen chairs, beside closed windows, looking out at the brick walls of deserted factories, for years and years. Yet nothing is with them; it keeps faith with them, and from it they bring back messages:

  Hurt, they say, and suddenly their bodies hurt again, like real bodies. Death, they say, making the word sound like the backwash of a wave. Their bodies die, and waver, and turn to mist. And yet they can exist in two worlds at once: lost in the earth or eaten by flames, and here. In this room, when you re-say them, in their own words.

  But why do women like them? Not like, I mean to say: adore. (Remember, that despite everything, despite all I have told you, the rusted cars, the greasy wardrobes, the lack of breakfasts, the hopelessness, remain the same.)

  Because if they can say their own bodies, they could say yours also. Because they could say skin as if it meant something, not only to them but to you. Because one night, when the snow is falling and the moon is blotted out, they could put their empty hands, their hands filled with poverty, their beggar’s hands, on your body, and bless it, and tell you it is made of light.

  Adventure Story

  THIS IS A story told by our ancestors, and those before them. It is not just a story, but something they once did, and at last there is proof.

  Those who are to go must prepare first. They must be strong and well nourished and they must possess also a sense of purpose, a faith, a determination to persevere to the end, because the way is long and arduous and there are many dangers.

  At the right time they gather together in the appointed place. Here there is much confusion and milling around, as yet there is no order, no groups of sworn companions have separated themselves from the rest. The atmosphere is tense, anticipation stirs among them, and now, before some are ready, the adventure has been launched. Through the dark tunnel, faintly lit with lurid gleams of reddish light, shoots the intrepid band, how many I cannot say; only that there are many: a band now, for all are headed in the same direction. The safety of the home country falls behind, the sea between is crossed more quickly than you can think, and now they are in alien territory, a tropical estuary with many coves and hidden bays. The water is salt, the vegetation Amazonian, the land ahead shrouded and obscure, thickened with fog. Monstrous animals, or are they fish, lurk here, pouncing upon the stragglers, slaying many. Others are lost, and wander until they weaken and perish in misery.

  Now the way narrows, and those who have survived have reached the gate. It is shut, but they try one password and then another, and look! the gate has softened, melted, turned to jelly, and they pass through. Magic still works; an unseen force is on their side. Another tunnel; here they must crowd together, swimming upstream, between shores curving and fluid as lava, helping one another. Only together can they succeed.

  (You may think I’m talking about male bonding, or war, but no: half of these are female, and they swim and help and sacrifice their lives in the same way as the rest.)

  And now there is a widening out, and the night sky arches above them, or are we in outer space and all the rocket movies you’ve ever seen? It’s still warm, whatever, and the team, its number sadly diminished, forges onward, driven by what? Greed for treasure, desire for a new home, worlds to conquer, a raid on an enemy citadel, a quest for the Grail? Now it is each alone, and the mission becomes a race which only one may win, as, ahead of them, vast and luminous, the longed-for, the loved planet swims into view, like a moon, a sun, an image of God, round and perfect. A target.

  Farewell, my comrades, my sisters! You have died that I may live! I alone will enter the garden, while you must wilt and shrivel in outer darkness. So saying – and you know, because now this is less like a story than a memory – the victorious one reaches the immense perimeter and is engulfed in the soft pink atmosphere of paradise, sinks, enters, casts the imprisoning skin of the self, merges, disappears … and the world slowly explodes, doubles, revolves, changes forever, and there, in the desert heaven, shines a fresh-laid star, exile and promised land in one, harbinger of a new order, a new birth, possibly holy; and the animals will be named again.

  Hardball

  HERE COMES THE future, rolling towards us like a meteorite, a satellite, a giant iron snowball, a two-ton truck in the wrong lane, careering downhill with broken brakes, and whose fault is it? No time to think about that. Blink and it’s here.

  How round, how firm, how fully packed is this future! How man-made! What wonders it contains, especially for those who can afford it! They are the elect, and by their fruits ye shall know them. Their fruits are strawberries and dwarf plums and grapes, things that can be grown beside the hydroponic vegetables and the toxin-absorbent ornamentals, in relatively little space. Space is at a premium, living space that is. All space that is not living space is considered dead.

  Living space is under the stately pleasure dome, the work-and-leisure dome, the transparent bubble-dome that keeps out the deadly cosmic rays and the rain of sulphuric acid and the air which is no longer. No longer air, I mean. You can look out, of course: watch the sun, red at all times of day, rise across the raw rock and shifting sands, travel across the raw rock and shifting sands, set across the raw rock and shifting sands. The light effects are something.

  But breathing is out of the question. That’s a thing you have to do in here, and the richer you are the better you do it. Penthouse costs a bundle; steerage is cramped, and believe me it stinks. Well, as they say, there’s only so much to go around, and it wouldn’t do if everyone got the same. No incentive then, to perform the necessary work, make the necessary sacrifices, inch your way up, to where the pale-pink
strawberries and the pale-yellow carrots are believed, still, to grow.

  What else is eaten? Well, there are no more hamburgers. Cows take up too much room. Chickens and rabbits are still cultivated, here and there; they breed quickly and they’re small. Rats, of course, on the lower levels, if you can catch them. Think of the earth as an eighteenth-century ship, with stowaways but no destination.

  And no fish, needless to say. None left in all that dirty water sloshing around in the oceans and through the remains of what used to be New York. If you’re really loaded you can go diving there, for your vacation. Travel by airlock. Plunge into the romance of a bygone age. But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. No more street crime. Think of it as a plus.

  Back to the topic of food, which will always be of interest. What will we have for dinner? Is it wall-to-wall bean sprouts? Apart from the pallid garnishes and the chicken-hearted horsd’oeuvres, what’s the main protein?

  Think of the earth as a nineteenth-century lifeboat, adrift in the open sea, with castaways but no rescuers. After a while you run out of food, you run out of water. You run out of everything but your fellow passengers.

  Why be squeamish? Let’s just say we’ve learned the hard way about waste. Or let’s say we all make our little contribution to the general welfare, in the end.

  It’s done by computer. For every birth there must be a death. Everything’s ground up, naturally. Nothing you might recognize, such as fingers. Think of the earth as a hard stone ball, scraped clean of life. There are benefits: no more mosquitoes, no bird poop on your car. The bright side is a survival tool. So look on it.

  I’m being unnecessarily brutal, you say. Too blunt, too graphic. You want things to go on the way they are, five square meals a day, new plastic toys, the wheels of the economy oiled and spinning, payday as usual, the smoke going up the chimney just the same. You don’t like this future.

  You don’t like this future? Switch it off. Order another. Return to sender.