Simoom
Simoom
Scatterwaite landed at ten pm. He never flew BA’s business class, thinking it was a waste of time and money-a cabin with slightly bigger seats crowded together exactly the same way as in economy but, unlike economy, full of people pretending to be posh-and instead often booked two seats with the proles. It was always mildly amusing to get one seat by the window and one by the aisle, sit in one and keep his belongings in the other. The person in the middle typically didn’t last long, because there were always other seats on the plane, next to normal people. Of course Scatterwaite could afford business class. But he disliked people anyway, so there was no difference.
He rescued his black Montblanc case from the luggage belt and, before boarding the Express, went out for a smoke. The call came just as he was lighting his cigarette, but Scatterwaite only answered after the cigarette was lit well and proper.
‘Alfred?’ queried the voice. It was tired and frail, with a touch of some Eastern accent. Scatterwaite disliked accents and so never attempted to place them. He himself spoke languages equally well, but his speech was always devoid of any local colour.
‘The same,’ supplied Scatterwaite evenly.
‘Are you already in the city, Alfred?’
‘Not yet. Smoking in Heathrow. You in hurry?’
‘As you might imagine.’
‘Not my strongest side, that.’
‘Ah. Know you what is a simoom?’
‘Yes. It is originally an Arabic word meaning a hot, dry desert wind; literally, a poisonous wind. It suffocates creatures.’
‘Ah. Yes, I know. That is how it feels.’
‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said Scatterwaite, who in fact didn’t care. ‘Is there anything particular you want? I like to have my cigarette in peace.’
‘Of course, have it,’ whispered the frail voice. ‘But it has to be done swiftly. The man, who is willing to go, cannot wait. He must. You understand.’
‘I must, also,’ Scatterwaite said levelly with a mirthless smile. ‘Do allow me my moment of reflection. I shall be contacting you really very shortly.’
‘But midnight is soon,’ the man on the other side issued a warning.
‘I am sooner still,’ responded Scatterwaite, now with the faintest hint of impatience. ‘Bye-bye.’
He hung up and stood there for a moment. The great city was rather far, and there was no carpet of lights to marvel at; so Scatterwaite was plugged into darkness. Then he breathed in and let the darkness outside be one with the darkness inside him, and imbibed some of the dying hubbub of the day. The tip of the cigarette flared brightly, as if heralding the connection.
‘There is no fear,’ said Scatterwaite to no one in particular with a little sigh. ‘Apart from being a small and insignificant thing, what can there be to fear? And if one is but an insect, a creature of no importance or consequence, how can one fear being what one is? Ambition discord breeds, soul rots, eyes blinds to light of day. Then self-contempt and petty doubt do cleave the clear spirit into worthless halves of hope and impotence. What more than this to fear?’
He smoked and thought some more, and remembered how he once spent a rather lovely summer night in Malaga. It was warm, and the promenade by the seaside, framed by palm-trees, was well-lit and full of people. Spaniards know how to drink and make merry. They live with pleasure, dragging their small children around with them, and eat after midnight without getting hideous.
Scatterwaite undressed and swam a little bit in the sea, his pale body enclosed in dark like an indifferent pearl. He swam close to a great ship. It was an unnerving sight. Man was designed to tread the land, and even then he flees big things that move of their own volition; but in the sea, one cannot be motionless even if one so chooses. The sea has a soul and an immortal movement of its own. They cannot be bested. At their hearts, most men feel weak in the sea even when the Sun lulls them into habitual motion. And here, in the presence of the great ship swaying on dark waves that brooded wordlessly on something beyond words, Scatterwaite, too, finally felt vulnerable and opened his heart to fear. The sea was even more indifferent than he.
Then in Malaga, Scatterwaite got back to the city. He looked around him and felt things, while the powerful heat of the fear that the sea had installed in him still lingered. He saw a girl who was extremely beautiful, walked up to her and spoke to her in Spanish; found out that she was a laborious student of English and switched tongues; treated her to a couple of nice drinks and interlocked tongues; saw her off to where she lived; left, hopeless, again without desire and without need.
There were many other places like this, where Scatterwaite tried to indulge himself by inducing fear in his lifeless soul. But slowly all this faded away and only little things remained, mild feelings that could never grow into anything of importance, little spikes on an otherwise flat curve. Inside Scatterwaite there lived a creature that was always shrugging, moving on, not dwelling on anything. This creature propelled him forward.
Scatterwaite had barely boarded the Express when the phone rang again. He answered.
‘Where are you, Alfred?’ asked the tired voice. ‘Are you already in the city?’
‘You phoned not twenty minutes ago,’ reminded Scatterwaite. He was silent for a while, then guessed, without pretending to be offensive: ‘Perhaps you are delirious. But I am coming, have no fear. All will be done in due course.’
‘Have great fear, Alfred,’ confided the voice. It seemed to be on the verge of tears. ‘A great chasm is in front of eyes, deep and lightless.’
‘There is light beyond,’ said Scatterwaite with such simple strength of conviction in his voice that he surprised himself. ‘A light fantastic.’
‘How do you know?’ asked the voice eagerly. ‘Have you seen?’
Have you seen? Scatterwaite wondered. No, I have not. But why? Why, indeed? Oh, the thought had occurred so many times, and yet it never seemed to make any sense. It still didn’t, this one final time.
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘For, you see, it is in my very construction to know these things.’
‘It is getting stronger,’ the voice complained. ‘It is riding the pain. The man must get what is his by right. He must get it fast.’
‘So he shall linger,’ said Scatterwaite calmly. The man breathed for a while into the receiver without saying anything and then hung up.
Scatterwaite disembarked at Paddington, hailed a cab and went to Mayfair. The driver said something to him by way of small talk, but he replied curtly and the conversation ceased. The taxi pulled over by the sidewalk in front of a city mansion. Most windows were dark. Scatterwaite entered without ceremony-people expected him-and made his way to the chambers of the caller. Inside, on a large pile of pillows and blankets, lay a small shriveled man of dark complexion, and by his bedside sat a nurse, surrounded by bottles, syringes and pills.
‘Have you no wife to sit by the bedside?’ asked Scatterwaite instead of greeting the man. There was no affront in his question, only sincere interest.
‘Why you ask?’ said the sufferer defensively.
‘Isn’t that what wives are for? In sickness and in death and so forth? I am surprised,’ said Scatterwaite and then shrugged, ‘but you have to forgive me, I’m not particularly well informed.’
‘Is of no importance now,’ said the man and licked his cracked lips. ‘Do you feel the simoom, Alfred? It is so hot that it devours now all things.’
‘No,’ Scatterwaite replied. ‘I do not feel it.’
‘Then hold me by the hand,’ implored the shriveled creature. ‘Hold, and I make you feel. The man, who is willing to go, cannot wait.’
‘He has waited a long time, hasn’t he?’ asked Scatterwaite. Suddenly now he wanted to back off from the whole affair. His thoughts flew back to Malaga. That girl was very beautiful. It was so strange that she had a husband, too, and a little child, and yet wanted to kiss him and walk with him by the seaside. And she pronounced his name in such a sweet melodious manner, as if it consisted of two parts: Al-Fred.
‘Do you feel the great fear rising inside you like a prehistoric mountain from the bed of the sea, Alfred?’ asked the man. He heaved his little body upwards on the monstrous pile of blankets and cushions, as if echoing his own words. ‘Do you see the great chasm, and behind it the light fantastic?’
‘Yes,’ muttered Scatterwaite slowly, chewing on some thought. ‘But not behind it. In front of it.’
‘Come, child,’ groaned the dark-skinned man. The nurse stirred. ‘Let have the liberation, the man is overdue, has to go.’
Scatterwaite retreated into the shadow and opened his Montblanc case.
‘I will not take your hand,’ he suddenly said in a very determined voice.
‘Oi! Take it!’ shrieked the lord of the manor. ‘Take it, for it is what you want!’
‘Well, what if I have thought this over,’ remarked Scatterwaite somewhat enigmatically, ‘and changed my mind? I’m sure you can get somebody else for the job.’
The man rose heavily on his elbows and proceeded to say something, but Scatterwaite interrupted.
‘Look, I have here with me newspaper clippings,’ he said with a genuine interest. ‘I’m not even sure why I carry them around, but now I understand. Pottery needs fire to be shaped, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be incinerated. More to the point, there’s a place here that calls itself “The Quintessential Fish and Chips”. Somewhere around Knightsbridge, apparently. “A bite of the sea,” they say, “and a bite of the land”. Rather clever, don’t you think?’ Scatterwaite himself sounded surprised.
‘What’s all this, then?’ said the man darkly. ‘Fish, pottery. You no longer want the deed? I will make you pay.’ He said this very matter-of-factly.
‘I am sure,’ said Scatterwaite. ‘You always do. Here, there, everywhere. But later. I will now with your permission bow out.’
He did that. As he went out, the whole house plunged into darkness. Strangely, Scatterwaite’s taxi was still there by the sidewalk.
‘Good to see you’re back,’ said the driver. ‘Came here myself once, mate. Where to now?’
‘Oh!’ Scatterwaite exclaimed (even though he still wasn’t very interested, but now in a different way). ‘Did you?’
‘I did. Where to, mate?’
‘Knightsbridge.’
‘Where in Knightsbridge?’
‘The Quintessential Fish and Chips?’ said Scatterwaite in a small voice. He sounded unsure, and as the cavity inside him was filling with fear as well as other wonderful things, he was far more conscious of being a finite human being of flesh and doubt.
‘They must be closed. Nobody’s open this time of the night, mate. You wanna go to a club or something?’
Scatterwaite thought a little bit.
‘Sure,’ he said bravely at last. ‘Take me to a club… or something.’
Scatterwaite landed at ten pm. He never flew BA’s business class, thinking it was a waste of time and money-a cabin with slightly bigger seats crowded together exactly the same way as in economy but, unlike economy, full of people pretending to be posh-and instead often booked two seats with the proles. It was always mildly amusing to get one seat by the window and one by the aisle, sit in one and keep his belongings in the other. The person in the middle typically didn’t last long, because there were always other seats on the plane, next to normal people. Of course Scatterwaite could afford business class. But he disliked people anyway, so there was no difference.
He rescued his black Montblanc case from the luggage belt and, before boarding the Express, went out for a smoke. The call came just as he was lighting his cigarette, but Scatterwaite only answered after the cigarette was lit well and proper.
‘Alfred?’ queried the voice. It was tired and frail, with a touch of some Eastern accent. Scatterwaite disliked accents and so never attempted to place them. He himself spoke languages equally well, but his speech was always devoid of any local colour.
‘The same,’ supplied Scatterwaite evenly.
‘Are you already in the city, Alfred?’
‘Not yet. Smoking in Heathrow. You in hurry?’
‘As you might imagine.’
‘Not my strongest side, that.’
‘Ah. Know you what is a simoom?’
‘Yes. It is originally an Arabic word meaning a hot, dry desert wind; literally, a poisonous wind. It suffocates creatures.’
‘Ah. Yes, I know. That is how it feels.’
‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said Scatterwaite, who in fact didn’t care. ‘Is there anything particular you want? I like to have my cigarette in peace.’
‘Of course, have it,’ whispered the frail voice. ‘But it has to be done swiftly. The man, who is willing to go, cannot wait. He must. You understand.’
‘I must, also,’ Scatterwaite said levelly with a mirthless smile. ‘Do allow me my moment of reflection. I shall be contacting you really very shortly.’
‘But midnight is soon,’ the man on the other side issued a warning.
‘I am sooner still,’ responded Scatterwaite, now with the faintest hint of impatience. ‘Bye-bye.’
He hung up and stood there for a moment. The great city was rather far, and there was no carpet of lights to marvel at; so Scatterwaite was plugged into darkness. Then he breathed in and let the darkness outside be one with the darkness inside him, and imbibed some of the dying hubbub of the day. The tip of the cigarette flared brightly, as if heralding the connection.
‘There is no fear,’ said Scatterwaite to no one in particular with a little sigh. ‘Apart from being a small and insignificant thing, what can there be to fear? And if one is but an insect, a creature of no importance or consequence, how can one fear being what one is? Ambition discord breeds, soul rots, eyes blinds to light of day. Then self-contempt and petty doubt do cleave the clear spirit into worthless halves of hope and impotence. What more than this to fear?’
He smoked and thought some more, and remembered how he once spent a rather lovely summer night in Malaga. It was warm, and the promenade by the seaside, framed by palm-trees, was well-lit and full of people. Spaniards know how to drink and make merry. They live with pleasure, dragging their small children around with them, and eat after midnight without getting hideous.
Scatterwaite undressed and swam a little bit in the sea, his pale body enclosed in dark like an indifferent pearl. He swam close to a great ship. It was an unnerving sight. Man was designed to tread the land, and even then he flees big things that move of their own volition; but in the sea, one cannot be motionless even if one so chooses. The sea has a soul and an immortal movement of its own. They cannot be bested. At their hearts, most men feel weak in the sea even when the Sun lulls them into habitual motion. And here, in the presence of the great ship swaying on dark waves that brooded wordlessly on something beyond words, Scatterwaite, too, finally felt vulnerable and opened his heart to fear. The sea was even more indifferent than he.
Then in Malaga, Scatterwaite got back to the city. He looked around him and felt things, while the powerful heat of the fear that the sea had installed in him still lingered. He saw a girl who was extremely beautiful, walked up to her and spoke to her in Spanish; found out that she was a laborious student of English and switched tongues; treated her to a couple of nice drinks and interlocked tongues; saw her off to where she lived; left, hopeless, again without desire and without need.
There were many other places like this, where Scatterwaite tried to indulge himself by inducing fear in his lifeless soul. But slowly all this faded away and only little things remained, mild feelings that could never grow into anything of importance, little spikes on an otherwise flat curve. Inside Scatterwaite there lived a creature that was always shrugging, moving on, not dwelling on anything. This creature propelled him forward.
Scatterwaite had barely boarded the Express when the phone rang again. He answered.
‘Where are you, Alfred?’ asked the tired voice. ‘Are you already in the city?’
‘You phoned not twenty minutes ago,’ reminded Scatterwaite. He was silent for a while, then guessed, without pretending to be offensive: ‘Perhaps you are delirious. But I am coming, have no fear. All will be done in due course.’
‘Have great fear, Alfred,’ confided the voice. It seemed to be on the verge of tears. ‘A great chasm is in front of eyes, deep and lightless.’
‘There is light beyond,’ said Scatterwaite with such simple strength of conviction in his voice that he surprised himself. ‘A light fantastic.’
‘How do you know?’ asked the voice eagerly. ‘Have you seen?’
Have you seen? Scatterwaite wondered. No, I have not. But why? Why, indeed? Oh, the thought had occurred so many times, and yet it never seemed to make any sense. It still didn’t, this one final time.
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘For, you see, it is in my very construction to know these things.’
‘It is getting stronger,’ the voice complained. ‘It is riding the pain. The man must get what is his by right. He must get it fast.’
‘So he shall linger,’ said Scatterwaite calmly. The man breathed for a while into the receiver without saying anything and then hung up.
Scatterwaite disembarked at Paddington, hailed a cab and went to Mayfair. The driver said something to him by way of small talk, but he replied curtly and the conversation ceased. The taxi pulled over by the sidewalk in front of a city mansion. Most windows were dark. Scatterwaite entered without ceremony-people expected him-and made his way to the chambers of the caller. Inside, on a large pile of pillows and blankets, lay a small shriveled man of dark complexion, and by his bedside sat a nurse, surrounded by bottles, syringes and pills.
‘Have you no wife to sit by the bedside?’ asked Scatterwaite instead of greeting the man. There was no affront in his question, only sincere interest.
‘Why you ask?’ said the sufferer defensively.
‘Isn’t that what wives are for? In sickness and in death and so forth? I am surprised,’ said Scatterwaite and then shrugged, ‘but you have to forgive me, I’m not particularly well informed.’
‘Is of no importance now,’ said the man and licked his cracked lips. ‘Do you feel the simoom, Alfred? It is so hot that it devours now all things.’
‘No,’ Scatterwaite replied. ‘I do not feel it.’
‘Then hold me by the hand,’ implored the shriveled creature. ‘Hold, and I make you feel. The man, who is willing to go, cannot wait.’
‘He has waited a long time, hasn’t he?’ asked Scatterwaite. Suddenly now he wanted to back off from the whole affair. His thoughts flew back to Malaga. That girl was very beautiful. It was so strange that she had a husband, too, and a little child, and yet wanted to kiss him and walk with him by the seaside. And she pronounced his name in such a sweet melodious manner, as if it consisted of two parts: Al-Fred.
‘Do you feel the great fear rising inside you like a prehistoric mountain from the bed of the sea, Alfred?’ asked the man. He heaved his little body upwards on the monstrous pile of blankets and cushions, as if echoing his own words. ‘Do you see the great chasm, and behind it the light fantastic?’
‘Yes,’ muttered Scatterwaite slowly, chewing on some thought. ‘But not behind it. In front of it.’
‘Come, child,’ groaned the dark-skinned man. The nurse stirred. ‘Let have the liberation, the man is overdue, has to go.’
Scatterwaite retreated into the shadow and opened his Montblanc case.
‘I will not take your hand,’ he suddenly said in a very determined voice.
‘Oi! Take it!’ shrieked the lord of the manor. ‘Take it, for it is what you want!’
‘Well, what if I have thought this over,’ remarked Scatterwaite somewhat enigmatically, ‘and changed my mind? I’m sure you can get somebody else for the job.’
The man rose heavily on his elbows and proceeded to say something, but Scatterwaite interrupted.
‘Look, I have here with me newspaper clippings,’ he said with a genuine interest. ‘I’m not even sure why I carry them around, but now I understand. Pottery needs fire to be shaped, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be incinerated. More to the point, there’s a place here that calls itself “The Quintessential Fish and Chips”. Somewhere around Knightsbridge, apparently. “A bite of the sea,” they say, “and a bite of the land”. Rather clever, don’t you think?’ Scatterwaite himself sounded surprised.
‘What’s all this, then?’ said the man darkly. ‘Fish, pottery. You no longer want the deed? I will make you pay.’ He said this very matter-of-factly.
‘I am sure,’ said Scatterwaite. ‘You always do. Here, there, everywhere. But later. I will now with your permission bow out.’
He did that. As he went out, the whole house plunged into darkness. Strangely, Scatterwaite’s taxi was still there by the sidewalk.
‘Good to see you’re back,’ said the driver. ‘Came here myself once, mate. Where to now?’
‘Oh!’ Scatterwaite exclaimed (even though he still wasn’t very interested, but now in a different way). ‘Did you?’
‘I did. Where to, mate?’
‘Knightsbridge.’
‘Where in Knightsbridge?’
‘The Quintessential Fish and Chips?’ said Scatterwaite in a small voice. He sounded unsure, and as the cavity inside him was filling with fear as well as other wonderful things, he was far more conscious of being a finite human being of flesh and doubt.
‘They must be closed. Nobody’s open this time of the night, mate. You wanna go to a club or something?’
Scatterwaite thought a little bit.
‘Sure,’ he said bravely at last. ‘Take me to a club… or something.’