Weaveworld

X

HUMANKINDNESS

o much desire.’ Apolline commented to Suzanna, as they walked the streets of Liverpool.

They’d found nothing at Gilchrist’s Warehouse but suspicious stares, and had made a quick exit before enquiries were made. Once out, Apolline had demanded to take a tour of the city, and had followed her nose to the busiest thoroughfare she could find, its pavements crammed with shoppers, children and dead-beats.

‘Desire?’ said Suzanna. It wasn’t a motive that sprang instantly to mind on this dirty street.

‘Everywhere,’ said Apolline. ‘Don’t you see?’

She pointed across at a billboard advertising bed-linen, which depicted two lovers languishing in a post-coital fatigue; beside it a car advertisement boasted The Perfect Body, and made its point as much in flesh as steel. ‘And there,’ said Apolline, directing Suzanna to a window display of deodorants, in which the serpent tempted a fetchingly naked Adam and Eve with the promise of confidence in crowds.

‘The place is a whorehouse,’ said Apolline, clearly approving.

Only now did Suzanna realize that they’d lost Jerichau. He’d been loitering a few paces behind the woman, his anxious eyes surveying the parade of human beings. Now he’d gone.

They retraced their steps through the throng of pedestrians and found him standing in front of a video rental shop, entranced by bank upon bank of monitors.

‘Are they prisoners?’ he said, as he stared at the talking heads.

‘No,’ said Suzanna. ‘It’s a show. Like a theatre.’ She plucked at his oversized jacket. ‘Come on,’ she said.

He looked around at her. His eyes were brimming. The thought that he had been moved to tears by the sight of a dozen television screens made her fear for his tender heart.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, coaxing him away from the window. ‘They’re quite happy.’

She put her arm through his. A flicker of pleasure crossed his face, and together they moved through the crowd. Feeling his body trembling against hers it was not difficult to share the trauma he was experiencing. She’d taken the harlot century she’d been born into for granted, knowing no other, but now – seeing it with his eyes, hearing it with his ears – she understood it afresh; saw just how desperate it was to please, yet how dispossessed of pleasure; how crude, even as it claimed sophistication; and, despite its zeal to spellbind, how utterly unenchanting.

For Apolline, however, the experience was proving a joy. She strode through the crowd, trailing her long black skins like a widow on a post-funereal spree.

‘I think we should get off the main street,’ said Suzanna when they’d caught up with her. Jerichau doesn’t like the crowd.’

‘Well he’d best get used to it,’ said Apolline, shooting a glance at Jerichau. ‘This is going to be our world soon enough.’

So saying, she turned and started away from Suzanna again.

‘Wait a minute!’

Suzanna went in pursuit, before they lost each other in the throng.

‘Wait!’ she said, taking hold of Apolline’s arm. ‘We can’t wander around forever. We have to meet with the others.’

‘Let me enjoy myself awhile,’ said Apolline. ‘I’ve been asleep too long. I need some entertainment.’

‘Later maybe,’ said Suzanna. ‘When we’ve found the carpet.’

‘Fuck the carpet,’ was Apolline’s prompt reply.

They were blocking the flow of pedestrians as they debated. receiving sour looks and curses for their troubles. One pubescent boy spat at Apolline, who promptly spat back with impressive accuracy. The boy retreated, with a shocked look on his bespittled face.

‘I like these people,’ she commented. They don’t pretend to courtesy.’

‘We’ve lost Jerichau again,’ Suzanna said. ‘Damn him, he’s like a child.’

‘I see him.’

Apolline pointed down the street, to where Jerichau was standing, striving to keep his head above the crowd as though he feared drowning in this sea of humanity.

Suzanna started back towards him, but she was pressing against the tide, and it was tough going. But Jerichau didn’t move. He had his fretful gaze fixed on the empty air above the heads of the crowd. They jostled and elbowed him but he went on staring.

‘We almost lost you,’ Suzanna said when she finally reached his side.

His reply was a simple:

‘Look.’

Though she was several inches shorter than he, she followed the direction of his stare as best she could.

‘I don’t see anything.’

‘What’s he troubling about now?’ Apolline, who’d now joined them, demanded to know.

‘They’re all so sad,’ Jerichau said.

Suzanna looked at the faces passing by. Irritable they were; and sluggish some of them, and bitter; but few struck her as sad.

‘Do you see?’ said Jerichau, before she had a chance to contradict him: The lights.’

‘No she doesn’t see them,’ said Apolline firmly. ‘She’s still a Cuckoo, remember? Even if she has got the menstruum. Now come on.’

Jerichau’s gaze now fell on Suzanna, and he was closer to tears than ever. ‘You must see,’ he said, ‘I want you to see.’

‘Don’t do this,’ said Apolline. ‘It’s not wise.’

They have colours,’ Jerichau was saying.

‘Remember the Principles,’ Apolline protested.

‘Colours?’ said Suzanna.

‘Like smoke, all around their heads.’

Jerichau took hold of her arm.

‘Will you listen?’ Apolline said. ‘Capra’s Third Principle states–’

Suzanna wasn’t attending. She was staring at the crowd, her hand now grasping Jerichau’s hand.

It was no longer simply his senses she shared, but his mounting panic, trapped amongst this hot-breathed herd. An empathic wave of claustrophobia rose in her; she closed her lids and told herself to be calm.

In the darkness she heard Apolline again, talking of some Principle. Then she opened her eyes.

What she saw almost made her cry out. The sky seemed to have changed colour, as though the gutters had caught fire, and the smoke was choking the street. Nobody seemed to have noticed, however.

She turned to Jerichau, seeking some explanation, and this time she let out a yell. He had gained a halo of fireworks, from which a column of light and vermilion smoke was rising.

‘Oh Christ,’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’

Apolline had taken hold of her shoulder, and was pulling on her.

‘Come away!’ she shouted. ‘It’ll spread. After three, the multitude.’

‘Huh?’

‘The Principle!’

But her warning went uncomprehended. Suzanna – her shock becoming exhiliration – was scanning the crowd. Everywhere she saw what Jerichau had described. Waves of colour, plumes of it, rising from the flesh of Humankind. Almost all were subdued; some plain grey, others like plaited ribbons of grimy pastel; but once or twice in the throng she saw a pure pigment; brilliant orange around the head of a child carried high on her father’s back; a peacock display from a girl laughing with her lover.

Again, Apolline lugged at her, and this time Suzanna acquiesced, but before they’d got more than a yard a cry rose from the crowd behind them – then another, and another – and suddenly to right and left people were putting their hands to their faces and covering their eyes. A man fell to his knees at Suzanna’s side, spouting the Lord’s prayer – somebody else had begun vomiting, others had seized hold of their nearest neighbour for support, only to find their private horror was a universal condition.

‘Damn you,’ said Apolline. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

Suzanna could see the colours of the haloes changing, as panic convulsed those who wore them. The vanquished greys were shot through with violent greens and purples. The mingled din of shrieks and prayers assaulted her ears.

‘Why?’ said Suzanna.

‘Capra’s Principle!’ Apolline yelled back at her. ‘After three, the multitude.’

Now Suzanna grasped the point. What two could keep to themselves became public knowledge if shared by three. As soon as she’d embraced Apolline and Jerichau’s vision – one they’d known from birth – the fire had spread, a mystic contagion that had reduced the street to bedlam in seconds.

The fear bred violence almost instantly, as the crowd looked for scapegoats on which to blame these visions. Shoppers forsook their purchases and leapt upon each others’ throats; secretaries broke their nails on the cheeks of accountants; grown men wept as they tried to shake sense from their wives and children.

What might have been a race of mystics was suddenly a pack of wild dogs, the colours they swam in degenerating into the grey and umber of a sick man’s shit.

But there was more to come. No sooner had the fighting begun than a well-dressed woman, her make-up smeared in the struggle, pointed an accusing finger at Jerichau.

‘Him!’ she shrieked. ‘It was him!’

Then she flung herself at the guilty party, ready to take out his eyes. Jerichau stumbled back into the traffic as she came after him.

Make it stop!’ she yelled. ‘Make it stop!’

At her cacophony, several members of the crowd forgot their private wars and set their sights on this new target.

To Suzanna’s left somebody said: ‘Kill him.’ An instant later, the first missile flew. It hit Jerichau’s shoulder. A second followed. The traffic had come to a halt, as the drivers, slowed by curiosity, came under the influence of the vision. Jerichau was trapped against the cars, as the crowd turned on him. Suddenly, Suzanna knew, the issue was life and death. Confused and frightened, this mob was perfectly prepared, eager even, to tear Jerichau and anyone who went to his rescue limb from limb.

Another stone struck Jerichau, bringing blood to his cheek. Suzanna advanced towards him, calling for him to move, but he was watching the advancing crowd as if mesmerized by this display of human rage. She pushed on, climbing over a car bonnet and squeezing between bumpers to get to where he stood. But the leaders of the mob – the smeared woman and two or three others – were almost upon him.

‘Leave him be!’ she yelled. Nobody paid the least attention. There was something almost ritualistic about the way victim and executioners were playing this out, as though their cells knew it of old, and had no power to re-write the story.

It was the police sirens that broke the spell. The first time Suzanna had heard that gut-churning wail and been thankful for it.

The effect was both immediate and comprehensive. Members of the crowd began to moan as though in sympathy with the sirens, those still in combat forsaking their enemies’ throats, the rest staring down at their trampled belongings and bloodied fists in disbelief. One or two fainted on the spot. Several others began weeping again, this time more in confusion than fear. Many, deciding discretion bettered arrest, took to their heels. Shocked back into their Cuckoo blindness they fled in all directions, shaking their heads to dislodge the last vestiges of their vision.

Apolline had appeared at Jerichau’s side, having Manœuvred her way round the back of the mob during the previous few minutes.

She bullied him from his trance of sacrifice, shaking him and shouting. Then she hauled him away. Her rescue attempt came not a moment too soon, for though most of the lynch-party had dispersed a dozen or so weren’t ready to give up their sport. They wanted blood, and would have it before the law arrived.

Suzanna looked around for some escape route. A small street off the main road offered some hope. She summoned Apolline with a shout. The arrival of the patrol cars proved a useful distraction: there was a further scattering of the mob.

But the hard core of dedicated lynchers came in pursuit. As Apolline and Jerichau reached the street corner the first of the mob, the woman with the smeared face, snatched at Apolline’s dress. Apolline let go of Jerichau and turned on her attacker, delivering a punch to the woman’s jaw that threw her to the ground.

A couple of the officers had caught sight of the chase and were now chasing in their turn, but before they could step in to prevent violence, Jerichau stumbled. In that second the mob was on him.

Suzanna turned back to lend him a hand. As she did so a car raced towards her, skirting the kerb. The next second it was at her side, the door flung open, and Cal was yelling:

‘Get in! Get in!’

‘Wait!’ she called to him, and looked back to see Jerichau being flung against a brick wall, cornered by the hounds. Apolline, who’d laid another of the mob out for good measure, was now making for the open car door. But Suzanna couldn’t leave Jerichau.

She ran back towards the knot of bodies that now eclipsed him, blotting out the sound of Cal’s voice calling her to get away while she could. By the time she reached Jerichau he’d given up all hope of resistance. He was just sliding down the wall, sheltering his bloodied head from a hail of spittle and blows. She shouted for the assault to stop but anonymous hands dragged her from his side.

Again she heard Cal shout, but she couldn’t have gone to hint now if she’d wanted to.

‘Drive!’ she yelled, praying to God he heard her and got going. Then she flung herself at the most vicious of Jerichau’s tormentors. But there were simply too many hands holding her back, some covertly molesting her in the confusion of the moment. She struggled and shouted, but it was hopeless. In desperation she reached for Jerichau, and hung onto him for dear life, covering her head with her other arm as the bruising hail intensified.

Quite suddenly, the beating and the cursing and the kicks all ceased, as two officers broke into the ring of lynchers. Two or three of the mob had already taken the opportunity to slope away before they were detained, but most of them showed not the least sign of guilt. Quite the reverse; they wiped the spit from their lips and began to justify their brutality in shrill voices.

‘They started it, officer,’ said one of the number, a balding individual who, before the blood had stained his knuckles and shirt, might have been a bank cashier.

‘Is that right?’ said the officer, taking a look at the black derelict and his sullen mistress. ‘Get the fuck up, you two,’ he said. ‘You’ve got some questions to answer.’