Everything You Need: Short Stories Read online

  12

  Saturday and Sunday blurred into one. I spent some of it in the pub, some in the park, some of it walking the streets, but most of it in my flat. Whenever I was at home, I found myself reading from the book.

  Not ‘reading’ from it in a literal sense, I suppose, but letting it sit in front of my eyes. The conscious extraction of meaning from a procession of words is not, after all, the only way of interacting with a text, or with anything else in the world. By now I had become sufficiently familiar with the book’s contents that I’d realized there was more than one rhythm to the words, that in the beginning they fell into one loose pattern — the one I thought I’d heard in the voice of the man who’d let me out of the park — but that by the end it had changed. No matter how much time I spent looking at the middle sections, however, I couldn’t put my finger on where the transition occurred. I found that I was intrigued rather than bothered by this. I cannot, after all, recall the point where I became the person who lives in this flat and exists how I do, after being the person who was so far in advance of the other students at university that the lecturers just let me do my own thing, convinced I would amount to a great deal. I cannot recall when the four-year marriage I abandoned, toward the end of my twenties, started to be something I no longer wished to be involved in — nor at what point I stopped bothering to send birthday and Christmas cards to the daughter that I’d gained from it. I cannot remember when I became exhausted instead of merely tired.

  Things rarely stop and start at easily identifiable points, after all. If they did, then it would be much easier to know when to hold up your hand and say ‘Wait, hang on, hang on, stop — I’m not sure I like where this is going’. Life tends to shade from one state to the next, to evolve, or devolve, to grow and develop, or fade and fall apart. Books and sentences and words hide this, with their quantized approach to reality, their pretence that meanings and events and emotions stop and start — that you can be in one state and then another that is different and that the whole of life is not one long, continual flux. Whole languages collude too, especially the European ones, setting object against subject and giving precedence to the latter over the former: only rare exceptions like certain Amerind dialects structuring themselves to say ‘a forest, a clearing, and me in it’, instead of the individual-as-god delivery of ‘I am in a clearing in a forest’.

  I think of these things as I sit. I find other things changing, too, aspects of the world becoming different. In the local corner store, for example, I discover myself chatting fluently to the strikingly beautiful Polish girl behind the counter, in her own language. I find myself walking away with her phone number, too, which is not the kind of thing that usually happens in my life.

  I begin to feel hopeful that change is still perhaps possible in life, and that it is happening to me.

  13

  I arrived at Portnoy’s shop at mid-day on Monday, as requested. I’d made no further progress, but had stopped worrying about it. He wanted to meet, so we’d meet. I’d tell him I didn’t know what the book was supposed to be about, and he wouldn’t give me the remaining six hundred pounds, and that was that. Life would go on.

  When I got to Cecil Court I saw through the window that Portnoy was with a customer, so I lurked outside and had a cigarette. Though the cough hadn’t come back, the smoke felt weird in my lungs, and so mostly I just held it in my mouth instead. Portnoy’s book was in a carrier bag in my hand. There had been times over the weekend where I’d found it difficult to imagine handing it back to him, so much a part of my life had it become. At some point in the night that had changed. I was tired of it now, tired of its music and transitions, tired of not knowing what it was about. Ignorance isn’t always bliss. Sometimes it’s just a huge pain in the arse, especially when it’s about to cost you six hundred quid.

  The customer eventually left, clutching something in a neat brown paper bag. An early Wodehouse first, most likely, one of Portnoy’s minor stocks in trade. I entered the shop to the sound of him coughing.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve got what I had,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Could be, my boy, could be.’

  Clear grey light was coming through the shop window, and it struck me how seldom I’d seen him lit by anything other than his subterranean lair’s murky glow. Today his skin looked very pale, and waxy.

  I held the carrier bag up toward him and started to speak, but he shook his head.

  ‘Downstairs,’ he said, and reached over to flip the sign on the door to closed.

  I followed him down the narrow and abruptly-turning staircase that led to the basement office. The gloom down there seemed even more sepulchral than normal, so much so that I was halfway across the floor before I spotted that something was different: even then it was the smell that gave it away first, or the lack of it.

  I stopped, looked around. ‘What happened to all the books?’

  ‘Moved them on,’ he said.

  ‘What, all of them?’ The room was entirely empty. Aside from the desk and its two chairs, everything was gone. Even the framed page of The Dream on the wall. All that remained was dust.

  ‘Some were sold, others put in storage.’

  He sat at his side of the desk, and I sat at the other.

  ‘Are you shutting up shop?’

  ‘Good lord, no,’ he said, lighting one of his cigars. ‘Well, in a way, I suppose. I’m moving on.’

  ‘Moving on? Why?’ I felt panicky.

  ‘The cost of living where I do has simply become too high, especially as the fabric is falling apart. The lease is up.’

  ‘But you don’t actually live here, do you? In this building?’

  He smiled. ‘I meant it figuratively.’

  I had no idea what he was talking about, and didn’t really care. I put the bag with the book in it on the desk. He looked at it, then back up at me.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The book,’ I said. ‘I’m giving it back. I can’t do what you asked.’

  ‘And what did I ask you to do?’

  ‘Translate it. Tell you what the book was about.’

  ‘No. All I asked for was the gist.’

  ‘How could I give you that without translating it?’

  He smiled again, kindly. ‘A good question. But you have. Can’t you feel it?’

  I was distracted by the smell of his cigar. It smelled good. It made me wonder, in fact, why I smoked cigarettes.

  He evidently noticed me looking at the object in his hand, and held it out to me.

  ‘Want to try?’

  I took it, put it in between my lips. Drew some of the smoke into my mouth, and let it lie there a while.

  ‘Nice,’ I said, putting the cigar back in the ashtray.

  ‘I have to be elsewhere in an hour,’ Portnoy said, ‘So I suggest we get down to business right away.’

  ‘Business?’ My head felt fuzzy, as if I’d drunk far too much coffee. The cigar smoke, perhaps. But I allowed myself to hope that — as he appeared to be claiming that I had done what he asked — he might actually be intending to pay me the other six hundred pounds. ‘What business?’

  He reached into his jacket pocket, and took out a small set of keys and a piece of paper with an address written on it. He put them on the table.

  ‘There are six months left on this building,’ he said, indicating two of the keys. ‘I’m afraid that will be more than sufficient, given your condition.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The address on that piece of paper is where you live. A pied a terre in Fitzroy Square. Not overly spacious, but extremely comfortable. I have left a fairly substantial sum of money in a suitcase under the bed.’

  I stared at the young man opposite me. ‘Portnoy, what the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m not a bad person,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to be at ease in the time that’s left. The money should see to that. I’ve left a note in the drawer of the bedside table, too, should you decide
to, ah, self-medicate. The phone number on the note is that of an extremely reliable and discrete gentleman who can supply morphine at short notice.’

  ‘Morphine?’

  ‘The pain can be very bad,’ he said, apologetically. ‘It’s only going to get worse, I’m afraid.’

  Only then did I realise that, instead of having my back to the room, the wall was behind me. That I was sitting on the opposite side of the desk to normal. And then that the man I was facing was not Portnoy.

  It was me.

  I tried to say something about this, but was derailed by a cough. It went on for a long time, and hurt a very great deal. When I finally pulled my hand away from my mouth, I stared at it. It was Portnoy’s hand.

  ‘What have you done to me?’

  ‘Not so much,’ the other man said. ‘Think of it as “somatic” drift, if you need a word. It’s never a book’s cover that matters, after all, but what’s inside. The gist. You found him in the end.’

  ‘”Him”? Don’t you mean “it”?’

  ‘No,’ he said, standing. ‘Good luck. And remember that gentleman I mentioned.’ He picked up the bag from the desk, and replaced it with something in a frame. ‘A leaving present.’

  I reached out for it, feeling tired and old and unwell. I tilted it toward me, and saw it was what had always hung on the wall behind him, that single page from the first folio of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Seeing it close up for the first time, I noticed that three words had been lightly underlined, in pencil.

  Thou art translated.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘From the Latin “translatus”,’ Portnoy said, ‘serving as a past participle of “transferre” — to bring over.’

  He picked up the cigar from the ashtray, and stuck it in his mouth.

  Around it he said ‘Goodbye, dear boy,’ and left.

  14

  In a month the deterioration has already become marked. From notes left in Portnoy’s flat I learned that my new body has lung cancer, of a belligerently terminal variety. Nothing that can be done about it — except, I suppose, what he did. I wouldn’t know how to even embark upon such a course, even if I still had the book, which I do not. It is with him, wherever he is, in whichever quarter of the world he is starting upon his new life. Or a new chapter of it, at least. I wonder how many times he has done it before, how many younger men, like me, have allowed his meaning to be substituted between their covers. A great many, I suspect.

  My days are comfortable, in any event. I sit in the large leather chair in his sitting room and look through the books he left behind, or out of the window at the trees in the square. If the pain gets very bad, I avail myself of the substance I now obtain from the gentleman Portnoy recommended. It beats knocking back pints of Stella, that’s for sure. On afternoons when I don’t feel too dreadful I go for walks, watching the leaves turn, feeling the weight of the city around me, appreciating these things while I still have time.

  Last week I even took the tube a few stops north, early one evening, and sat at a table in the corner of the Southampton for a while. Yes, naturally I was hoping that Cass might come in, and wonderously, she did. Her eyes skated over me, not recognising the portly, grey-skinned edition in which I now find myself bound. She had a few raucous glasses of wine with some guy I didn’t recognise, but took herself off into the night alone. I wish her well, wherever she is.

  After she left I walked slowly around to Dalmeny Park, and down the alleyway, and looked through the closed gates. There’s no way I could climb them now, and it’s not really my place, after all. My body knows it, however. It remembers being there as a child, with its father, and so I let it stand there for a while, before wheezing my way back up the road and waiting until a cab came to take me back to my nest.

  Where I continue to die.

  The odd thing is that I don’t mind too much.

  Some stories, some people, deserve their length and span. They merit a novel-length treatment, have things to tell and other lives to illuminate. The real Portnoy — whoever or whatever he was — is one of those, and I’m sure he’s already making far better use of my body than I ever did. There are others, people like the man I was, who should aspire only to being a novella, or perhaps not even that.

  Short stories have their place in the world, after all. The tale remains afterwards, beyond death, and perhaps one day someone will read mine and understand what I amounted to.

  A few events and mistakes, several hangovers and a kiss, and then a final line.

  Everything You Need

  Sheila supposed their marriage had been old-fashioned right from the start. They met in 1961 and married in 1963, a year which now sounded - and felt, sometimes, though not always - an awfully long time ago; but even back in those dim and distant days the world had been changing. Women had begun to quietly reassess and realign their roles in the home and the workplace. “Quietly” was how women had most often done things in those days. It worked, too. Nobody likes being shouted at. Sometimes a soft voice gets heard far more clearly.

  She and John had been perfectly well plenty aware of the changes in society, and paid due attention. On the other hand... their way worked. He was cheerfully useless in the kitchen. Sheila was a decent cook and a whizz at keeping the place clean and tidy. He pitched in with both from time to time but it was a chore for him and a pleasure for her, so what was the point of reversing roles for the sake of it? Likewise with the children, and the washing and ironing. Yes, you could insist these household tasks be shared evenly - just as he could have insisted that, once the children were old enough, she go out and get a job - but neither felt the need, any more than Sheila fancied going without a bra.

  Doing what the new people tell you, for the sake of it, is surely no more sensible than doing what the old people had said, for the sake of that. The traditional division of labor worked for them, and once both had realized this they let it be, with some relief.

  Not that she’d been the little wife indoors - far from it. She drove, of course (though he kept track of the car’s service records, and when it needed an MOT). She was the one who dealt face-to-face with plumbers or electricians when something in the house needed fixing (though it was John who filed the maintenance contracts, and could lay his hand on them when required). He knew where the bank statements were, the mortgage agreement, receipts for major household expenses like furniture and white goods; he knew who the car was insured with, who held their medical insurance, what it covered and what it did not, and how much they were paying each month for any number of other things and services, and to whom, and which were on direct debit, and how on earth that worked.

  She fretted from time to time that it was ridiculous she didn’t know any of these details, but just handed it all over to him. Usually this concern stayed within her own head but sometimes she would articulate it. He’d shrug and say it was all boring stuff and he had a system and there was no point both of them wasting time and energy over it when there were more interesting discussions to be had and cups of tea to make and long walks down country lanes to enjoy together.

  Whenever some household matter required clarification or resolving, he’d quickly and easily find whatever document was needed. Afterwards he’d put it back in its designated drop file and push the drawer shut. If she happened to be nearby, he’d smile at her.

  ‘Remember,’ he'd say. ‘Everything you need — it’s in here.’

  “Here” was the three-drawer filing cabinet that stood in the middle of the wall of the upstairs room John used as an occasional office. In the days after he died, this was the room Sheila found most difficult to traverse. It had nothing to do with her. It had been his, just as the kitchen had been hers. She felt like a tourist in his office, with neither local currency nor any understanding of the language. When they’d gone on holidays to France as a family it was her schoolgirl French that got them fed and into hotel rooms: John limited his input to standing in the background looking affable.
In the office, however, she couldn’t even say her name.

  She found it particularly hard when confronted with some aspect of the process of death that required documentary evidence. ‘John dealt with all that,’ she’d say, feeling old and small and stupid. Fiona didn’t actually roll her eyes, but you could tell she wanted to. Fiona had been climbing the corporate ladder — with some success - since the age of eighteen. She had a spreadsheet for everything and backed them up to the cloud, whatever that was. She didn’t understand that a way of being had existed between her parents, a tacit agreement, or that her mother’s lack of engagement with ten thousand pieces of household management over the decades demonstrated neither lack of will, nor intelligence, nor a failure of fealty to the sisterhood - but had just been the way things worked.

  John would have known what the cloud was. He wouldn’t have used it — he believed in bits of paper, documents you could touch and hold (and wave imperiously at someone, if required) — but he would have at least brought it within his ken. Sheila was slowly starting to realize that, when it came to the administration of the life she’d lived and now had to keep on living, her ken was entirely empty.

  Each time this happened Fiona would dart up to the little office and open the filing cabinet and quickly track down whatever document was needed.

  ‘Say what you like,’ she’d say, returning in triumph. ‘Dad’s systems worked. It’s all in there.’

  ‘Everything I need,’ her mother muttered, quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, and put the kettle on again.