THE BRIGHT STARS

 

 

Mais, maintenant, nous sommes au théatre. Voici que le rideau se lève....

(Alain Robbe-Grillet,

Pour un nouveau roman)

 

 

 

t is a dreadful place. I go in. It is a sooty place, a black hall. I see it hung with bats, the foam comes out of the seats, they’d be better made of wood, or concrete arcs. It’s a warehouse, that we call a theatre. The musicians have a pit, a hole, yes, in one corner there is standing water. What it needs is some hero, spurring up the lighting, summoning up ushers. Now, empty, banal. Not a metaphor, just nothing; rather, something dark, it smells of boots.

The director, Igor, says, ‘Gilded pills, yes they slip down – what do they heal?’ But healing’s not his game. On his stage there is no death, ‘It trivialises,’ he says. Instead there’s suffering, laid on with relish. But it’s all a show. What troubles me is that brash laughter coming from below, sometimes it seems beneath our feet an engine snarts and crackles, there is a pause, maybe some music like it’s squeezed from stones. Then days of silence.

Igor puts on shows, he’s a spectacularist. He’s also my friend. My girl, Katya, acts for him, maybe she’s his girl too. As actors are.

Igor instructs me, his ideas. And back there, where I’m not at home, they’re starting up the killing, small-scale, vendettas, old scores become new scores – only if you slaughter the kids will you have – well, not peace but resentment seething to the cemetery. Killing is right, it comes from our experience, and though it’s stupid, sure makes its point. And down we go, for justice, our good cause.

Igor says, ‘I need human voices, they give warmth, a carpet of illusions, and more, always you need more, I think about sixteen, talking and singing, you don’t need words, or to distinguish them, but those instruments, so limited, yet you can make them loud, so loud, they call and trill like birds. The poor things, you can make them do anything, they’ll make love or kill themselves, so willing.’

I say ‘Obedient,’ and he, ‘No, not at all, but willing, finding a plot, grasping so quickly how the tragedy ends.’

I say, ‘Always tragedy?’ and he, ‘What do you expect, immortality? When it’s over for the evening, back in their box they go. And you must pull them out again, they dance upon your strings.’

And I think of those recordings, Austrians of 1944, clapping like mad at Richard Strauss, then out to meet their horrible ends, and after having killed so many. Nothing cancels out, and maybe Igor’s right, these moral tales are only fables, stick in the mind but nothing more, just glue of plot. They’re all there, prancing and yodelling on – inaudible until you open up the box.

And Igor says, ‘It’s just obsession. But no one really dies, and while you’re planning it, you live!’

Drama is alien to me, an orphan by profession.

I remember – the neighbour sleeping on the cobbles when it was hot inside his house, kept drugs in his vacuum cleaner. Another – who imported cocaine in painted plastic lifesize trees, tried to kill me with a log. The basalt columns, they say there was a temple of Cybele, triangulates with Macedonia and Izmir, anywhere triangulates with anywhere else, and those black stumps are everywhere. Like burnt-out trunks – we’d no nature left, just houses, safe houses, for penitents and not – all styles and none. The white buffaloes, that disappeared from their wallow by the river – then came decorative swans, stolen to eat when there were feasts. Eaten, like the pigs they butchered in the gutter, blood like mine running down to somewhere, blond lashes and pink skin becoming white.

Neighbour who said, ‘Blow on the head gives a sharper edge to reality’ – concerned about my head, though those swans were killed horribly. Remembering things that don’t give you an identity – Igor says that gangs can kill below the level of the media, could be an epidemic.

And my girl acts, though she can’t sing – will she be acting, making love to Igor? Odd profession, throwing yourself into any passing imagination.

Igor’s friend has a limousine, and Igor goes with him to collect clients, and then walks home – keeping fit in luxury.

I have a Serbian name. I administer the money that may pay for him. His shows.

I belong to a leper country, the bosses make us responsible for the history they wished to make. I have never lived there, never attached. The name’s enough. My demons are alive, like children’s toys, fresh in their boxes twenty years on. Every detail bright, but never played with. Dressed up a little, can’t shoo them to the past – living with injustice that can never be appealed, yet weighs like guilt. And so I feel at home in Igor’s play – choices that aren’t, retribution from all sides, rescue that kills.

I’ve my doubts about Igor and the spectacle he’s planning, he’s obsessed by what they were watching – in Moscow, wasn’t it? – when the commando, women, widows, armed, what they hell did they want, blow it all up? ‘North’ something, wasn’t it? I forget, everyone’s forgotten. And then the special forces came in and made it all real drama, my god, – the gas, the buses full of rescued people dying, stacked like dried cods, he wants to make the drama.

My God, those poor Chechens, and the killing there, and now the Russians too – and Capital comes in, you can’t destroy it – but that other capital they did, Grozny, and now all neat, rebuilt without the people, no one remembers now nor maybe cared a lot just then, he wants to make a stage that has it all: a civil war, the music, and the musical. The audience that becomes the corpses, commando struck down with all their military junk. A putrid scheme, it makes you feel clean and free just to think it, then to extract maybe another big idea – but then you throw it off like something dirty, another of the little nightmares we hope burn off at dawn.

All blown away, shot, burnt, decapitated, buried in ruins, crushed under tanks, slit open, starved or bludgeoned, then gassed, neglected, saved to be killed, revenged, forgotten. Or resurrected – those that remember, those that grieve, maybe they find that Igor’s scheme, that Igor’s person, is something ugly, ambiguous, is something putrid, made for himself alone, not at the level of their reality, some kind of therapy to make him feel. Fable of suffering, as if it happened centuries ago.

To make it, on the stage, happen all over. To accomplish what? Resolve, depict, or just to shock and make some bucks?

And I can say, you’ll get the cash, more likely you might get the cash – but you can’t bring the people back, it’s all gone by, another country, no one character to make you cling, sit on. Just invented figures gripped by ideas or circumstance, action or innocence.

All over! – out you walk, no gas, no guns, no buses, a piece of history, and you think – maybe the killing’s not the point, it’s culture, religion, policies and plots, the practicalities, errors, soldiers think in their way, then try to think like those guerrillas, widows some, or warriors – how did they think, maybe spaced out or tricked. And who can read those clans, decide who planned it all? Not the killing, then, but the responsibility – but then, and after all, what does that do, we’re sitting in our seats, thinking great thoughts at Igor’s big idea (sheer vanity). What a pity.

Igor defends himself – for these are early days, and later he just runs ahead. It seems I’ve seen the horror and the trick, but missed the point.

‘You miss the complexity, and so the reality of life – you counterpose concepts and deplore the results. I know, it’s because you’re Serbian – though a good liberal one. Neighbours killing neighbours – then you see they are like you, they are you, and so you say “halt”. But everyone else, it’s not either-or, universal us and them, death, suffering. And ‘Bring us together, all.’ For the rest – it’s the rules. Rules of being. The rules count, you know. If you’ve no rule, just being cruel and seeking vengeance, so that every atrocity’s part of your suicide, you do and then are done to, so you miss the essence. The tragedy. The culture. Not “what” but how and when and why.’

I say, ‘Igor, I just hand out the money. I am not a Serbian. Anyway, you see emotion coming from those rules, you want that audience permanent, gassed but alive, sitting there under your spell. That’s not the rules,’ and Igor says, ‘It’s my rules, rules of my game.’

 

*

 

Do we hope, putting on this play, or finding guys who can put fingers in your brain and open up the light, that we shall reach a truth? Whether it’s complex or direct, what will these corpses serve, when Igor’s turned them into eloquent ghosts, the technique polished, all of life is there, the actors act – behind them, not to be seen, the lovers, agents, landlords, bankers, magi?

I worry about Igor, can he keep up with the pace of the world? And so appear contemporary? And fill the stage – all the contents he couldn’t put into books, making an audience, that leaves – satisfied? He wants to make the public choose. Commando, widow, spectator, soldier – survivor or dead. Choice. Not destiny.

What choice can an audience in a theatre have? One public watching the drama of another. Like it’s seen itself? Who are they, what are they, these battered brainy elves and demons? It seems to me like the White Knight – the childish play: the song, the title of the song, the plagiarism, the something else that is the song but not the song you hear. Hear? Are you supposed to hear it? That Russian musical, where everyone was gassed, the paying audience, the – maybe – paid guerrillas, terrorists, the religious, killers, trussed-up bundles of black, armed and inert. It seems to me like home, home in a fable, fairy tale it can only be so horrible and entertaining, brainy, if you shut it in a theatre.

Well, if the world weren’t full of coincidences, it wouldn’t be the world. But must it also be solipsistic? Well, yes, I guess so.

I worry about Katya. I worry about myself. Can she keep up with the pace of the world, Igor’s world? What would we lose if he failed to put it all in, all Northwest, whatever it was called? Some angle, some injustice, fresh uncovered, some mass grave of circumstance and fantasy. Yes, we’d lose some angle. Bring in the crowds, tickle their fancy and tweak it, tease them. He tells me,

‘No, Milan – it’s not like that. If I understand you, you’re standing too far back. You should go into the jungle, learn to live with everything you find there, even if they eat your soul.’

I ask, ‘How do you put Faust in with all those poor people, martyrs who wanted to be, martyrs who didn’t know a thing, victims before and victims after?’

Igor says, ‘If you’re eating scrambled eggs you don’t need to know about chickens.’

‘The trouble is, the bosses think you’re a fraud, unqualified.’

He laughs. ‘If you’re a creative, how do you “qualify”?’

‘They say, “Read books, win prizes, have tattoos.”’

‘They’re cretins.’

I may agree, but say, ‘You’re rubbish, Igor.’

‘Milan, you’re crap.’

I object, ‘I’m supposed to be.’

 

*

 

He says, ‘Do you know what happens right here, beneath your feet?’ and he points at the stage decking, at the trapdoors where they used to come up from hell. ‘Down there, there’s the Bright Stars.’

He looks triumphant, and it will take much time before I understand.

I say, ‘Just tell me what you need.’

‘I will.’

‘You don’t mean to gas the public in their seats?’

He spits a grin, a mask somewhere between comedy and tragedy. He says, ‘You liberals, with your moralising bluster – the last of you, you Americanisers, how many thousands did you manage to educate? – blast them away, and if you’re too few, then suicide and bomb-blasts, off with their heads, in sacks, into the historic river,’ and his hating face comes into mine. ‘Your bloody crowd, you have the better rhetoric. And now the name is “all humanity”. Just try saying, “Feed me, I’m hungry,” and “if you don’t, I’ve got a gun”, and then you’ll see how far humanity will get you.’

‘So you will gas them? If I give you the money?’

He’s brash and pretentious and here we are bickering like two queens or male canaries in their cage, spatting over females and some nothing bits of seed.

He says, ‘I don’t want to save the world, pretend to give a message to our patrons,’ and he mimes primping at a ticket.

‘Then what? It’ll only ever be theatre, a masochistic evening out. They could be home, and drink or screw or watch TV,’ and he laughs,

‘They’ll do all that, and less.’

I say, ‘Then what?’ again, although his anger runs up my bones.

He says, ‘You love that Faust role, think you sell your soul just once and wait the end that tells us not to try it, leads to hells, so better penitence and knee drill, maybe you’ll get a sniff at some saintly broad, and see if you like that, a life of masturbation in the double tomb and tut tuts at the television,’ and he stamps up our aisles, he screams, ‘Yes, aisles, like in a church, and this you call a venue, where the burghers come for titillation and a flash of tits – what a monster we’ve invented, worship of humanity, of us, ourselves!’

He turns away: ‘This awful hangar, with its no planes, no airmen, its barebone seats, no curtain that fell down – here, here I’ll reveal the mirror. Behold the Man!’

It’s true, if hell should have an antechamber, this is it, and who in hell’s supposed to clean and decorate, there’s tougher work to do, though I suppose the best there is, that’s the best that we can do. ‘It’s stark, I like it stark,’ I say.

‘Why can’t you give them satin, like to sit in, touch of gold and cupids, maybe some heating, make it worth their while,’ and I am sure he wants to gas them, and I think there could be problems.

‘Beneath your feet, Milan,’ he says, ‘and not just in the sewers. You should learn, but not from looking.’

‘Be careful the bustle doesn’t drown out the content,’ I say.

‘I don’t have any content yet. Besides, people remember the peaks, not the geology.’

‘People remember falling down the lavatory stairs in the interval.’

‘Then we’ll bring those stairs into the auditorium, everyone will have a void before them. And no intervals.’

I wish he didn’t force me into Doctor Faustus’s part. He’s just the chancey that everything happens to. The guy who only has bad hands and cannot bluff.

 

*

 

(much later)

This actor guy, Bruno, says, ‘I’ve been fired. Igor says I get in the way of his ideas.’

‘I’ll try, get you back in, but I can’t cover you.’

‘You’re too weak.’

‘Experience tells me ...’

‘You continue making the same mistakes. You can’t rent a backbone at your age.’

I speak to Igor. He says, ‘He interrupts my ideas. Yes, he’s a bright lad, that’s the trouble. The critical grin is not a useful adjunct to the muse’s diadem.’ He laughs.

‘Aren’t you exaggerating, trivialising? It’s only a spectacle, a masque, not real power, real victims.’

‘Then you haven’t understood what we are doing here.’

I report to Bruno.

A while later, I see him with the crew. He calls me over.

‘I went to the Bright Stars.’

‘Good for you. What did they ask of you.’

‘Nothing. Errands.’ He’s pushing a worn-out motor scooter.

It seems that almost all the crew have spare-time duties with the Bright Stars. Mostly, a crew’s like a volcano – spits fire and rumbles, never lets you forget it stands there over you – then once in a lifetime, it erupts and covers you with sulphurous crap.

There’s an intercom between my office and the stage. I needn’t tell them I always leave it open. I ask one of the lads from below – now short hair, long hair don’t have philosophical meanings, I can’t say which one it was, but maybe Bic? – ‘Who let you guys use this space?’

‘Igor. It’s just space.’

‘What you do here? Deal? Wheel, maybe,’ and to lighten the air I point to a scooter being serviced.

In the gloom there seems to be a Mercedes beneath that plastic.

‘We don’t want the Good Ones charging rent,’ I say.

We call the extractors, business, mafia – call them anything except that last one – we call them Good Ones, they’re like the silent Fates who knit, the silent, blind monkeys who can break your legs or torch your house.

Bic says, ‘Nah! Rubbish! Nothing here to interest. We’re the Bright Stars, no one troubles us.’

I’m quite relieved: ‘What are you, then? An agency?’

He laughs, ‘Yes. We’re agents. Ready for anything. Any service.’

 

*

 

Igor makes the actors rehearse with deafening music breaking over them. Pieces from the beginning and end of the world – quite similar, these, the first humans, laments for the ensuing massacres, rites of spring, field masses, masses for the dead, apotheoses and sacrifice – never less than eight horns and triple woodwind. In my office it sounded like heavy silver chains poured down marble steps, the cogs in my ears tangled together.

The actors first screamed, then mouthed, some cried with frustration. Igor sat hunched in the last row of seats, unmoved while the actors stood on boxes, put high wigs and helmets on their heads, found tall boots, tore off their clothes. Plaster and cement fell from the ceiling and I saw long rusty wires swaying to the screams of trumpet and the discharges of big drums.

‘Leave the debris where it falls,’ he said quietly when assistants tried to remove the rubble. I thought of the shy people, often reluctant and distracted, who might come to his shows, avoiding the crusts of plaster as though they were integral to whatever extravagant and bewildering show they were to see – I suppose for Igor they made the picture, he proposed smashing down the roof, already condemned and wilting, leaving the audience to stand in the rubble or improvise themselves a seat. And all this before the invention started. We lost many actors. Those that were left hated us.

‘What if it rains?’ I asked him, knowing he hated to get wet. That saved the roof project, but he was passionate for destruction, more even than destruction.

I said, ‘You can get their attention by starting thirty minutes late and closing the bar in intervals.’ A mistake.

‘Attention? I don’t want their attention, I want their suffering. If they must be drunk, so be it – give them each a bottle – meths, if you like. Make them howl, go blind. Share the pain of those idiots screaming their faces off up there,’ he shouted, as the orchestra roared on and the half-naked sinners gestured and waved their fists on stage.

Igor’s play. Nonhumanist, not destined for the future, or for future successes.

 

*

 

The public can decide – do you want rescue, plus the danger of death? Permanent suspension in the theatre? Or try to do a deal with people seeking death – and so, revenge? Do you want the resisters, in one way or another, to succeed? What might that mean, how far on is the future?

With some hindsight, how far is public interest, even public justice, with the martyrs? And a ‘victory’?

Or is the idea of choice absurd, misleading and deceptive? Who has choices here? Buy the ticket, take your chance, then maybe have a vote or two, will of the majority, all that. And put it in a theatre, give it a frame, as if something is resolved, decided here – a place where gods and madmen rampaged, our blood myths acted out, or culture burned like acid etching, under that midday sun, on marble seats. All the human condition, your state, my state, incest, suicide and murder – the hope, the choice that’s all around us – though not when it is useful. And when it’s useful – whose is the use? Another slippery question – Igor might pose them all, but he sees resolution not in the arguments, but in the noise. And he’s quite right – those stun grenades, the deafening tapes, the gunfire – everything’s too loud to hear whether execution was by bullet or by poison. Noise everywhere.

 

*

 

I say, ‘No shooting in my theatre,’ and Dan, the carrier, Bright Star, hears me and laughs.

‘It’s all changed,’ he confides. ‘All the politics, new worlds, left, right, jackboots and flags in primary colours – all past. The only transgression, the only transformation, is the one that we propose. New life! All these creatives, slaves to managers, the business, production of whiffs of culture – what’s their purpose, their future? Inventors – forced into the first stop, the bank, guy in the suit. Or gal. Which is worse? And the young punks, millions of them – timid thugs, guys who’d want to make giant strides but can’t afford the trainers. What does mister middle ground, the Lady Aspiration, have to say to them, poor ruined kids – desperate at fifteen, shagged out at twenty, obese at thirty, forty, fifty – what boneyard is their destiny?’

He gestures at my auditorium, its slabs of bitumen. ‘It’s junkie death, this. It’s where life puts the needle in its toes, and hopes the end is near, and warm and faceless,’ and he laughs again.

I say, ‘Don’t the heavy guys give you trouble? I said no shooting here,’ and Dan goes on, ‘Those brain dead! Read the bible, do their accounts. Money and first communions, shooters and lots of jail, cell rules – lifetimes of managing the family, scum capitalism, ugly cretins making the beautiful suffer,’ and on he goes.

‘No shooting, mind,’ I say again.

‘Don’t worry – we are his devilish majesty’s most loyal and fragrant opposition. The dirty stuff is done outside – and doesn’t matter. It’s not our aim. We’re not a business, don’t want prisoners or slaves.’

‘But not exactly legal,’ I add, and again he laughs, ‘To find if what we’ve done’s illegal would take a hundred years, and laws from every level. Those old guys, the mafiosi, are so visible – whores in doorways, sniffing in the toilets, pistols trading round the trashcans. We aim at high invisibility – of ourselves, and what we do – the rest is just the dirty detail.’

Marco – I find he’s the visionary, boss – takes over. ‘Consider all the traditions, the patriarchy, nations, all that. Well, we’ve never been a nation, and never wanted it, so that does away with deference and obedience, the benevolence of the powerful – other myths like that. But mostly other people aspire to some immense idea – submission to that great dead thing, belief that any grain of sand can call itself a beach – or else they wonder why they got a state but still feel powerless and oppressed. The great idea – we can’t even contemplate it. For us, it’s trial and error, advantages or water cannon in the streets. Mere pragmatism. Protection. Any gang can give you justice and protection – maybe some cash as well.’

He’s a beaky, streaky, yellowy lad, a savant. ‘And the violence – men against women, men on men,’ he rolls along. ‘Where does all that come from, where’s it going? Here, we still love children, or pretend to, most of our neighbours fear and hate them – nasty little knowalls, or they’re armed and creeping up on you. So, where’s all that ending up? And sex – all that stress on “afterwards”, “despite”. People get it over, off on their journeys – think of it as much as possible – but do it quickly, sniff some powder, take some drinks, to fix it in your memory, but at the time it’s just a wave of culture crashing down. Throws you on the rocks, it’s good it’s over, then to think of something else, dream some more dreams. But all this worship of your body – leads to every heresy and then to disbelief. The body dies – it’s mostly spent its life to die and turn to marbled flab.’

I barely understand. I say, ‘It’s all quite eloquent – but after all, you’re just a gang. The old stuff dies, and more stuff – well, I can’t say “takes its place”, the picture changes, other forms move in, and on. But gangs are gangs – quite interstitial.’

He shudders a little at this last word. He strokes it, holds it up, tests its opacity. Then, offhanded, says, ‘Well, the future’s all made up of little bits, but when it comes, it’s all there is, you have to cling to it although it runs away like water.’

Gangs. Find a gang and join. Find a gang that wants to take you. Stick to the rules, pull onward like a donkey. Then into the mincer, with the rest.

Marco turns away from me, he’s found me wanting, or maybe tires of finding words.

 

*

 

‘Whose little lamb are you?’ I ask. It’s a sad and serious girl, one of their flock.

She doesn’t answer directly, but says, ‘I’m Elektra. Grandfather was a positivist, wanted the kids called Voltage, Radium and so on, but mother insisted on a classical name, so I’m part energy, part sadness.’

‘And a question of matricide too’ – which is all I remember of Elektra’s story, though I don’t believe in original sin, and there’s no certainty that she’ll act out the drama of her name, although it usually happens so. Behind us a screen tells us the nation’s leader’s charged with paedophilia.

‘Well, there go the judges,’ I say. ‘He’s been grooming his people for decades, and now he’ll never go to trial,’ but she seems indifferent.

‘At least he’s got the common touch,’ she says, but without enthusiasm.

Above us there’s a shriek. Factory whistle. ‘Only the avant garde uses that sound,’ I say. ‘It’s quite out of fashion in our industries,’ and I hear Igor try it over and over. I ask her,

‘I’m curious – how do you see your boyfriends’ industry.’

‘Taking over brains? Clever.’

‘And the punishment? That they deal out?

She laughs, ‘Everyone has a right to self-defence. Anyway, what I care about is painting,’ and she unfurls her folder.

I’m thankful the drawings are nonverbal, quite figurative, indeed. Even kitsch. Even ... I almost say ‘quite good’, but other people’s creation encountered by chance is always a delusion when it’s not a masterpiece.

I say, ‘Masterpiece used to mean the start of a career, now it means the summit, or the end. So maybe it doesn’t mean that much at all,’ but she folds them away, not bothered.

Igor is reading a book on tigers – lucky tigers and dangerous tigers. He has read many books on shapeshifting, and I see his actors swell and float, for them bilocation is quite easy – they’re often outside smoking and inside screaming, they’re like distended lungs, bellies of bagpipes, leather sacks hairy inside. Their voices are monstrous, no longer voices but the echoes from basilicas, shouts of dying animals sacrificed – becoming part of the mystery, horribly martyred.

‘Can’t scale that down,’ says Bic, poking his index fingers into brains, quite soundless. Electronic. ‘Respect for that training,’ he says, of drawing, tigers, who’s to tell – as if it’s training greyhounds chasing electric fluff. ‘What does it achieve?’

Elektra says, ‘You make the loudest sound you can, and then it’s happiness, maybe, or some other resolution, like – make a precipice – you can jump off or fly, or just then turn away.’

That’s the idea, but why? Why the precipice?

Mondays the Bright Stars sell some stuff. Not robbed, just counterfeit, but Marco says, ‘It’s fakes of fakes, it’s fashion rage. Copies. What you want,’ and Dan nods, ‘There’s no aura, if that’s what you mean.’

I say, ‘I don’t mean anything. Just intrigued.’ And quite ensnared.

 

*

 

On other days, they are an agency, and people come and sit on office chairs and go out pleased, some papers printed out by Bic. And then there’s the commissions. To transit stuff, by ship or raft, people or phrases, estimates, it’s all the same, it all goes by the wire – and none of it is specially real, except perhaps the people, but Marco says, ‘Those are the ones you never see, who never tell. You never count, and they don’t do the sums – its benefaction, in whatever sense,’ and I don’t know what sense, although I know you’re better off not being here, or there, and maybe pay a guy to take you up a ladder, throw a six and cross a desert, fool the cops. And anywhere is better at this time than where you are, and so you pay to make a move, some day you’ll reach the board’s end and become a king or queen, or own your territory, even sleep a bit – but in the meantime, on you must move, and if the Bright Stars don’t feel like doing it, then someone else, some thug, some clod – that’s what they say – will take your cash and put two fingers in your eyes or lock you in the fridge, or just forget you on some island, waiting for a boat. Boat in a bottle.

They’re a fascinating bunch, and their beautiful hens, Elektra, Franca, Giulietta – painted like Copts and cooing round – they’re each one an epic of aspiration and good taste. Monday’s taste.

I tell Igor, ‘They’re remarkable lads. They know the past, they’re our future.’

He ignores me. ‘I have the shape, the sound. It’s the content that eludes me. I know all the sounds and smells. Fear. Noise.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard the noise.’

‘Sitting in the theatre. The fucking theatre, man! Then in come the martyrs, and you’re pressed into your own – martyrdom – at their hands, for what? Crimes done in your name. And in come the saviours, your guys – and they’re going to kill you. Design. Or accident that comes right from your horrible history,’ and I add, ‘Everyone’s horrible history.’

‘Specific, this one,’ he says, ‘and everyone’s at once in touch with it, crime and expiation, crime you never did, expiation that can’t work, would be obscene.’

I say, ‘I know – putting the art in’s hard.’

 

*

 

A scientific gang. Their purposes? To enter brains, change humans and their nature, nature too. To punish. To profit. To protect – mostly themselves. ‘We are the fantasists, the others are clods.’

Cultivate traditional foods. Win the love of beautiful women (I’ve seen them – Elektra, Franca, Giulietta – all not bad!)

Four stars, and thugs to help us out. Marco, poet. Dan the carrier, runs the agency, Johnny the fixer, patron of the thugs, and Bic the Laptop who looks through everyone’s keyhole.

Poet? Or visionary, the old roles, sentimental, you can bet. Even happy families, blood weddings, all that, aspiring to the petty bourgeoisie, intelligence that works on just a paragraph, commonplaces made graffiti, fixed for everyone to see and to ignore. Disgusting, can’t we pay some cleaners, maybe a guard with gun and radio? But here the content too eludes us.

 

*

 

Beneath Igor and the theatre, the Bright Stars work. No shooting here, I beg you, please. ‘We aren’t the thugs. We are the future.’

What’s beneath them? A realm beneath their basement. That they know about. Everything is built on something else, no licence, just obsolescence, forgetfulness. To be the thing you worship, or you say you do – but here – a lack of content. Igor’s shocking, empty statements.

‘Are you badged? Badged to me?’ I ask Katya.

‘Badged like “pinned”, like branded ox? If you like. If it makes you happy.’

‘The Bright Stars’ women talk like that. And the guys say, “Tonight I’m going badging.”’

She’s unimpressed: ‘So, what’s new? Little curds of tradition, help the water flow.’

I think ‘hmm’, and say, ‘Igor’s making it up as he runs,’ and she replies, ‘Everyone does.’

‘He went down well – somewhere. Came recommended.’

‘The best, the only way.’

I say to Marco, later, ‘I should know what you’re doing down there.

‘We’ll pay rent,’ he says, ‘more rent.’

‘OK.’

     He tells me without being asked, ‘Everything new starts with a gang – family, dynasty, great saint, preferably from some grave – gang or clan. Few years to make it stick, bit of capital, soldiers, execution of the traitors,’ he pauses and laughs. ‘The corporations, the long wars – a hundred years, thirty years, cold wars, wars of religion – they’re especially bountiful. In the end, all run by gangs.’

‘It seems obvious. Now you say it.’

‘When you peel back the rhetoric, yes. Stuff like “you voted for them, it’s the system, progress, liberation,” whatever the fuck, and everyone wanting to be rich and normal, push the stowaways overboard. Plenty of sharks around.’ And he laughs. They’re always laughing. He says, ‘That Igor makes a good noise – he’s on to trumpets and synthesisers now. Hope in the end it’s worth it all.’

I’m concerned. I say, ‘He’s patterning in the public. Where they’ll sit. Role for each. Put them in the scene. Sitting there, waiting for death. Paying their money.’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘It’s too much of a scam for me. But you’d better watch him and your Katya. If he can’t get to write his play, he may take on your woman, if you care, of course. He’s always putting her on those elastics, naked, flying out over the seats, what there’s left. Bit of fantasy playing there.’

Marco dreams his future. ‘Wow, like the king and queen in Egypt, high over the dam.’

I ask, ‘Who’s to be queen?’

‘They’re not even touching, king and queen. I might be on my own. Like the presidents on the mountain – though I’d prefer a whole body. With tattoos.’

‘You’ve got to be dead,’ I say sourly, though kings and presidents don’t bother me, don’t mean a lot.

‘Well, that’s something we can change quite easily. Just to sit there, forever, watching the guys drink the water in the dam, till it’s all gone and wasted, and I’m still there, father to the people. Mother too.’

 

*

 

Not long after, a lump of bitumen falls. It’s very near, and as I skitter away, other lumps follow in a line. I say to Johnny, ‘Hey, you’re the fixer. You trying to fix me? Maybe because I’m Serbian?’

‘Serbian,’ he says, ‘what’s the link? Some kind of religion? If someone wants to get you, you’ll get got. Better carry an umbrella – a steel one. This place isn’t stable.’

I say, ‘Maybe some guy’s play got turned down. You guys haven’t aspirations that way, have you?’ Almost everyone has quires of unpublishable stuff, for movies, theatres, you name it and it all goes as garbage on the web. But behind it all, there’s a good thrust of jealousy and delusion – just like for genocides, only usually the writer’s short of weapons, and I’m thankful for that, though if the roof falls in we’ll maybe lose our licence – then I think, well, no, we’ll get a licence from the Bright Stars – they’ll just want to put their plays on, or their girlfriends’, what the hell, if no one comes their cut’s reduced, and maybe someone sees a little sense – and then I think of Igor. Not a Noh play, just a no, and though I’m scared by falling stuff, I snigger just a bit to give our Johnny time to smarten up, but then, if it was him he’ll try again, nothing ventured, as the bankers say. Though what’s the gain for him, I just don’t know – money in the art line being just all air and speculation, not even Igor’s seating plans can make it solid – though if he should eliminate an audience, that would be solid trouble, not to mention hell.

In the basement, Elektra is painting. Four easels. Haven’t seen any, nor so many, for years. The Bright Stars posing, singly, fooling about, as sacred knots, intertwined turtles, apes in paradise. She’s scolding them, shaking them. They’re hooting with invention.

‘These will go,’ says Dan with pomp, ‘all over the world, to all affiliates,’ and Marco adds, ‘A touch of divinity will do no harm.’

She uses black like Beckmann. Her effect lies between the elevated and the threatening.

‘How will the Kazaks respond to this,’ Bic asks, ‘You’d better put in something showy, like a Cadillac, a park with bridges, some good cutlery,’ and she ignores him. But the idea is planted, and she adds to some – tattoos, and others have accessories, a holster on the table, watch that tells your mood.

And I feel scruffy, and I think of where my grandparents were born, that single street, red peppers drying, pig shit an affront to neighbours – if they cared. Grim dancing followed by grim coupling, the horse bought with your sweat, horse dying so much worse than people. Kids that save your name, your land, and eat you to the bone.

The Bright Stars go first class, or else incognito – but they go everywhere, passports a gazetteer. ‘Lots of initiatives on this little fellow,’ says Bic – he trips in space and lands in Mexico, Shanghai.

‘I can see the future,’ Johnny hums, ‘and no one’s any older, no one dies,’ it’s banal, but I think, ‘They should be doing Igor’s play. They are Igor’s play,’ and from above I can hear Katya protesting, as she’s launched again, ‘Igor, I’m a dancer, not a blob on an elastic!’

Perhaps, if an actor’s just a container, of no particular size or colour, a dancer’s something else, is bodybound, unfree, a double, not a void. But Igor likes to empty anything, or any person, takes the musicians’ instruments, makes them make sounds like something else – or no sounds at all, miming some riff, some rhythm. Improvising from the spaces in their heads. They hate him, he has voided them, but he has gained nothing, taken nothing from them. He despises what little content they may have – the music, air, they breathe and strum for him must just be vacuum. From nothing, something grows. Or else it doesn’t.

We’re at the primal stage, when Bright Stars are away – Cancun, Nagpur. Elektra’s pictures tour the world – to be affiliate, you have to stick one on your wall. Like a famous person, though they’re just about unrecognisable. Elektra says, ‘I only paint the kings,’ with that she’s done. Finished. Passed on the gift.

 

*

 

Marco asks about the play to come. I tell him, ‘It’s got the most beautiful, magnificent frame ever. Just lacks the picture,’ and I think of Katya. When I speak of her, I talk from the heart – a funny metaphor, all you want of the heart is that it goes on beating.

Marco says, ‘I don’t go for beautiful things – it just means someone got there first. Like saying things are untouched when they’re on the tourist track and full of belvederes.’

‘Do you recognise magnificence?’

‘That’s better – but it could be an Edsel, or something quite trite and fleeting.’

I say, ‘If you think like that it must be hard to do poetry.’

‘The others call me Poet. I’m just a visionary.’

I think of a picture of dervishes, having a good time, being massaged, drinking, reaching into tall jars for dates. Ready to whirl, but not just now.

At least these guys don’t hate Serbians, don’t know where it is, it was. And those real socialists, the true, the just – where are they now? An invention unpublished, obsolete before you translate the paper model into metal, real metal.

 

*

 

Johnny handles the political cover. ‘Those guys are interested in cheese and pigeon shit,’ he says. ‘So, that deals with serving the people – and the rest is vanity. Theirs, and ours. That’s what people want – sell and eat the cheese, clean up the shit. The rest is power unscrutinised. It keeps them, if not happy, off our backs and fawning too.’

News comes of a shooting. Dan says, ‘The guy is selling houses – stuck in a jam, he pulls his piece and pop – high on the shoulder, guy in front, some sporty type. Better to be enclosed,’ and Johnny says, ‘Those guys who sell the houses – very angry types. Like travel agents. Get frustrated. Random pops, and once in jail, they don’t know what to do. We love them,’ and he laughs. They make the cops look good, arresting them. Little snubby guns, lucky to hit a human.

Johnny says, ‘We’ll clear the dogs tomorrow.’

‘I haven’t heard them,’ I say. Who could hear anything with Igor and his show? Johnny says, ‘The Romanians get to stay a bit, they’re in the space down the downstairs.’

‘I didn’t know there was,’ I say.

‘Well, for them it’s an adventure and besides, that too will pass, we’ll make them rich and clear them out – they can’t stay with the dogs, we can’t put them on the street – besides, they’re always relatives of yours.’ He questions as he affirms.

I say, ‘Not me, maybe ancestors. Common use of the horse, displacing infantry, but little more, not language and not bosses, sometimes occupiers we shared,’ but Johnny’s off in politics.

‘Those guys are real antiquaries,’ he says. ‘Show them a shrine, a scrawl, bundle of bones, skulls to roll – and they’re protecting them, consultants – all that stuff, and then the tourists come, they make a mess and then there’s millions cleaning up and guarding them, and payoffs to this church and that, but oh so slow, and little sums, and notes in envelopes. You need to live a hundred years to turn a buck, and long before, they lose it all to keep them out of jail,’ he laughs. For clients in the basement –

‘And then, I think we need a desk,’ he says, ‘though two chairs seems a bit more cosy, and another Merc to keep the other company.’ And they have that red tank.

     It’s interesting, and I don’t hold him back.

 

*

 

Then on my intercom we hear, ‘What you see in that dreary bastard?’ It’s Igor and Katya, Katya isn’t keen to defend, just says ho hum, and Igor tells her that the show will make her body sparkle – and an actor comes to me and says, ‘That Igor’s fired me, says I can’t scream loud enough – it’s not our job, the scream comes, if it does, spontaneously.’

I tell him, ‘I can do nothing – he’s the boss, it’s just auditions,’ but the guy is clearly miffed, he says, ‘Igor’ll give everyone like me a ticket. In the audience,’ and I think, ‘If the show goes as it’s planned, this guy’ll have no trouble screaming,’ and Dan and Johnny look at me, a little kindly, and they say, ‘Come on, we’ll give you a ride,’ off the Merc the plastic goes and we are in and whirling off.

 

*

 

The fat black car speeds up – a cop gives chase for fun, then waves as he drops out. We’re bouncing mostly up and down, and on the down we hit the tarmac, but as he races on, Dan says, ‘They only made a few like this, looks like a slug, flies like a carpet,’ and I think, ‘Really, the politicians covering for them – they can’t be small town mayors, worried about the cheese. That red tank – just a souvenir, can’t make a coup with just one piece of antique armour,’ but Johnnie says, ‘It’s red because the last guy painted it like that,’ and it makes me think – ‘If there’s mystery behind some scene, it means you can’t take it seriously,’ and on we run.

We’re on the outskirts now, the sheep are grazing on grey grass, the water here in pools is blue and silver, yellow, sage, it’s really beautiful, and Johnny says, ‘You shouldn’t eat the cheese,’ and here are viaducts, arches for triumphs in the future, roads from nowhere, and a hub of industry, the guards with pistols playing cards, the sheds all fallen in.

We’re closer in – and Johnny says, ‘The dealers keep the music loud’, and as we pass the snaking blocks, each palace has a window pouring down the Heavy Metal, just like slag, to get the clients in. And now we’re into gangland, little kingdoms – surveillance, some by squads of little boys, others have fat cars parked on the corners with inside four guys. I wonder how, with those dark shades, they see what’s what – their cars have deeply tinted windows, but Dan says, ‘It’s just for show – one day we might use the red tank, take it round, to show them what we think,’ but what they think is mystery.

We’re near the centre now, here, there’s a press of tourists, pickpockets, and security – they’re all looking down and backwards – yes, I guess there’s architecture, how’d you tell, and maybe florid paintings and the stuff that you can’t steal or do your writing on, and Johnny says, ‘There, you’ve seen it all, and saved the pain of travelling,’ though pain there is, of speed and wanting to be finished with it.

But Dan has seen the cinemas – we all remember movie time and chat like antiquarians of when we had our lives inside. He says, ‘The story business – that was one magnificent scam! Horror and love, night-flying, massacres – those old magicians and their mates – how they invented! Made you weep, and rage, and marvel – it was all an art! Or maybe you never thought – they twist your tail, they take your cash, they give you fantasy eternal. Didn’t you see it?’

‘I see it,’ and we’re back with Igor, and I hear him say to Katya, ‘Your mister “itch”, the guy without an origin, you know the joke, “You can take the itch out his pants but you’ll never take the ‘itch’ off his name.”’ And that’s maybe Katya’s laughter, though usually with me she is quite delicate, but now, who knows, and I feel nauseated, Dan is saying, ‘The countryside. It doesn’t smell, but then it gets you in the throat. You shouldn’t eat that cheese.’

Johnny says, ‘Who’d ever want to be big boss of that kind of place?’ and Dan says, ‘Spinning money out of junk.’

‘And the people, my dear,’ laughs Dan.

‘The bosses there are all illegals, spend their lives in hiding, making people sad – just parasites and chancers. Who’d want that – unless you’ve extended families to support, and more fool you. All that responsibility, and then some punks will shoot you dead,’ and Johnny makes the gesture, finger cocked then smoking.

‘The trick’s all in the switching, the planes; from dust to diamonds. And on balance – we are benefactors, explorers. Not for the recognition, that absurdity – no, it’s the creation.’ And Dan smiles round, half serious.

What do they do – or rather, what’s the part they think enriches them?

Igor tells me, later, ingratiating – ‘I’ve got the emotions to the boil. I’m getting there.’

 

*

 

I overhear Katya say to Elektra: ‘A little while here, then we could go away. Even together ...’ and Elektra says, ‘Dan thinks that even before it was all fashion and celebrity, it was just a scam. Writers drawing it all out, making it all a fiction, making you laugh and cry – not a reflection but a travesty. He says that all that’s interesting is faisandage – the hanging of the dead, the corruption, the pheasant whiff that makes it good. To eat, of course. The smell of death that makes desirable the lovely bird, that stimulates.’

Katya says, ‘Well, Dan sounds quite smart.’

‘He did a bit at college, we all did. It doesn’t cost here. But it’s Bic that’s really bright – that laptopping leaves you free to put the content in, invent. Pity that you’re empty, like an actor,’ and Katya says, ‘The dance just makes a thing, quite odourless, for guys to fantasise about. Same guys that patronise your paintings, maybe buy a bit of you to go with,’ and Elektra says, ‘That Igor – just can’t spit it out.’

‘He’s a spectator, wants to do it all, but really he can only see someone else who does it. Even reality. He’s in the wrong place – he should be buying tickets, not selling them,’ and they both laugh – it’s clear that Katya doesn’t dwell on me, but surely likes it when they look at her.

Igor tells me, ‘The Bright Stars want to take me for a spin – a bit grander than yours!’

 

*

 

Dan and Johnny, off again. Marco stays, to work with Laptop. I ask him, ‘Why all this marble?’

‘For the clients. For the Romanians. For us. We found it in the grottoes underneath the underneath. I hate Roman painting, umber and faded purple, the gods long gone, the alabaster cracks up when you move it.’

I say, ‘You’re supposed not to take it, and to hide it if you do. And how do you know the gods have gone?’

Dismissively, he says, ‘Who thinks of Cybele now? My favourite. The cults were meant to be concealed. And now they are, for good.’

I say, ‘Like Katya. She’s gone. I feel sore about it.’

‘Roll with the fashion. While you’re living it, you have to feel the quality – it’ll soon wear out. Unless you’re wedded to the antique business. Enjoy the ups, you won’t suffer through the downs.’ I say, ‘It’s not impermanence I resent, it’s betrayal.’

With that he seems to sympathise. ‘It’s all that Russian’s fault. Destroyer.’

‘Only the name’s a bit of Russian. He’s just a tormented soul, handing out the suffering.’

‘He makes one hell of a noise’, and I think, the Bright Stars, with those Heavy Metal tapes, everything roars, the rock is like a gruyère, sound spurtling out like whale spume, tunnels of the Underground alive with riffs and shouting.

Marco says, ‘That Katya’s done her sums, and she’ll be off. Dancing like a dervish, without the spirituality.’

And I’d like to ask, where does the money come from, and he’s saying, ‘Bic, the laptop guy, can tell us what the tall poppies, the big cheeses, plan to do – so we do the crit., the next steps too.’

‘So you’re super lobbyists, consultants?’

‘We know the future. Sell a longer term. Or keep it for ourselves.’

‘That sounds quite legal.’

‘Depends – everyone has some secrets – some you can find out, others not. It’s poker with appeals courts, scams overseen by guys in robes. Roman imperial, I’d say.’

‘And so – you make the future?’

‘Men make their history – you may have heard of that? – but only within the limits. Limits we don’t recognise. Then – there’s our charitable work.’

I think of the red tank. ‘Employment for the lost boys?’

‘Where the cash is made.’

I remember something about men changing circumstances, and needing to educate the educator – it must mean Igor and myself. And it goes on, that this divides society into two parts, ‘one of which is superior to society’. That must be the Bright Stars. It’s a heavy message.

 

*

 

Igor returns from his spin, burnished like a copper cockbird.

He enthuses, ‘They took me up so high – mountains like gingerbread, each with a scholar and a winebowl, stretched out in the sun. And on every rock a gazelle, so slender it seemed made of tin, and seas – red, yellow, green, and forests without trees, just universes of insects, hierarchies of wing and leg, moving up and down, great heaving masses and all cooperating – some were feeding the young of others, warrior ants defend them all, and birds – songs like huge orchestras of brass, they sing together – roses, reunions, sweet farewells.’

His face is red and beaming. I ask, ‘Where did you go?’

‘Everywhere and nowhere. All connects, everything is so familiar, so many times lived over, drained to its dreg and yet eternal. And I was me, and other people, my name was mine, and also uncles, cousins, Russians, and we were all flying together – deserts with a surf of green, moustaches of scrub, and ochre wind towers – and the books! The lost plays! Menander in Arabic, all complete, and actors down there spouting it all out, no more zeros to be coloured in, but solid, some with orange, some with purple, wigs,’ and Marco says, ‘They must have given you something to calm your guts before they took you off,’ and Igor says,

‘Oh well, I don’t remember, you mean like a cake that says “now eat me” like the book? I can’t imagine that,’ and he goes on and on, and Marco says, quite kindly, ‘We had hoped to help you with your play. And may it run a thousand years,’ and I think, ‘Yes, it would help the Bright Stars if Igor were a fixture here,’ and Marco turns to me as Igor rants and twists,

‘Those old civilisations – it’s so sad – with all that endeavour all they’ve left us is their magic. And they’ve left a world where everything’s connected, those old warriors are moving through us, their nothing hands put weapons in our hands, they goad us on, the priests have no truth left, but only magic, rituals, the blood sacrifice repeated every week, we drink it in, are stupefied. Are stupid – not a critic nor an agent we.’

‘And this lack of place, the lack of happening?’ I ask.

‘We’re all in one world, we slide across it – it’s a billiard ball and we invent its features. Make them. Shift the rivers, mountains, dry the seas. And do you think the people are all solid in their bodies? Think of the schools, to make us all the same, the wars, the genocides, we’re bundled into graves with all our friends, our comrades raise their guns, and our last song is sung, and then it’s sung again, and put on tape, on ether, and there’s our sound, it lives for ever. But we don’t.’

He’s caught Igor’s rush, and I ask again, how do they make their cash. ‘We sell them the consequences of their projects. We see their futures, as they make them, but before they happen. Laptop can do it, only he’s a guy that’s difficult to pin down. Obscure, even.’

I say, ‘No one pays to know their futures. If they can’t correct their projects, what’s the point? No one pays to know that life is tragic, that you make mistakes – or even that you win, because I’d take your lead and halve and halve again your winnings. No one will pay for that.’

‘Then we make them pay.’

I ask, ‘What’s this about the future, Marco? What’s the attraction, what kind of place is it? Is it a place? Does anything happen there? What sense does it make?’

‘It’s quite familiar. Only you’re not there. And so it’s quite unfamiliar. And you’re not there. You must imagine that little clay figure, when God says, “Very clever, but it’s not alive,” and you say, “Of course not, how could it be? But tomorrow, if it’s not been junked, it’ll be there, and people will say it’s magic, and it won’t be alive, and I and maybe You – we won’t be alive either. And that’s the future, all that you know and don’t about it.”’

He goes on, ‘Laptop can have you see a lot of little true things on a screen. Remember all those revolutions that they used to make? The betrayals, sacrifices, and all that determination. To make us see that we are all one species. But we are, we were, we will be – all one species. That’s the future too.’

I say, ‘That’s quite depressing.’

‘That’s too bad.’

I say, ‘What’s your role in that? To be alive. Live in the future. Have a fine gang. And money, power and women – for the straight guys. Pretty much the same for gays. The rest is speculation. Or Sufism.’

*

 

(a little later)

All four are twirling machetes, it looks like the old Peking opera, or dervishes, but not nice, not kind. ‘Are we enjoying this?’ Johnny exhorts, and they laugh. Bruno is skating round the walls, sometimes he tweaks at the door, but knows it’s tight, he doesn’t speak or maybe even think of crying out, as if the sound might show the others where he is.

Marco, the poet, skids into his path, and as Bruno raises an arm to defend, slices off his fingers, and I hear them plop.

There is a cheer, and now the noise is like hounds baying, and Bruno at bay screams,

‘Fuck you, fuck you all,’ and like a magistrate Bic says, ‘No, that was in your cesspit mind, to fuck my beautiful sweet girl. The thought is heavier than the deed – a deed you’d never have been up to, more’s the point,’ and Dan the carrier says, quite thoughtful, ‘If we don’t discipline the thoughts, when the actions happen, we’d be lost. And that poor girl would be a victim – ah, if only she had innocence to lose, but that she’s lost a while ago, so now there’s just the violence, or even worse, compliance. We’d even for a moment lose the girl, and then, my friend,’ the others laugh, ‘we’d have to take you in. Or maybe not. And she, poor girl, we’d have to punish her – and that would not be just, and so, you see that’s where a thought can take you,’ and Bruno holds what’s now his hand under his armpit, but the blood from spots is now a flow, and as he whirls, Johnny cuts off another section from the left and unprotected paw.

‘What roles now?’ shrieks Bic. ‘Theatre of cruelty, when that comes round again,’ and now the cuts come slow and deeper – part of a leg to slow him down, but they keep off the head, though there is Johnny at his cheek, maybe an eye is popped, there seems a lot of spit and tears and jelly from an eyeball, and he’s making noises now that’s not a scream but like actors on TV in situations they pretend are similar to this, a kind of chuckling, clucking, as he sees his proud body sectioned up – the touch, the sight, and now they’re going for his sex, and I am silent here and watching to the end, I wouldn’t dream of leaving, nor of closing eyes or throat, the throat is blocked and who would intervene against those Bright Stars – they’re having an unstoppable good time, and Bic is over Bruno, he shouts, ‘My girl, my fucking girl, you dirtied her with your obsessive pokey thoughts. We are the law, you goddam knew it and decided,’ he swishes with his machete, ‘to do your will, your little will against our power,’ and now they’re at the body and I’m sure the nipples now are sliced away, my body goes to slush in sympathy, the stomach next and something shoots right out, I think of sausages and quite nearly it is that, and they are on him, four of them get in each other’s way, it’s butcher’s time, a kind of rhythm like a string quartet, the bows, machetes, sliding to and fro, they grunt although he must be dead, something avenged – but no, they leave him and he gives a last slow turn, just like a plane before it loses power and then I see that Dan’s already rolling out a hose, to clean the place, and Bruno’s gone – he’s had his judgment day and hell and expiation all in one, and if there’s talk of pardons I won’t yield, but now what’s left of Bruno is a sack, the kind they use for parcels, and I think, ‘Who can I tell, and will the Bright Stars do the same to me, and maybe not, my role was not exactly glorious, nor yet decisive. And in a way they’re right – they put him on the crew, and sure – he knew he had to keep his thoughts on theatre, not the women ... maybe he was too complicit, one of the gang, though a subordinate, and me – spectator but quite clean,’ although – a speck of blood has penetrated even here, I nearly laugh, what crap symbolism’s there! – but really I’m all shaken up, legs, throat, all that, are as they’re said to be. Shaky.

A terrible event. Their lust, enjoyment, justice being done – and seen in silence. Fear of the same.

 

*

 

After his whirl round purgatory – it not being abolished, as they say, though it is true – as they say – there’s no one in it, Igor produced a document.

 

 

Igor’s document

Who remembers Chechnya? Who remembers the terrorists, and the Russians, watching the spectacle, a public in at its own death. The Chechens seeking vengeance, the Russians killed by their state and its protectors. My idea – the theatre, death, the public. Also present – terror all round, the state that provokes, that kills, dispenses justice, says what vengeance is just and which is punishable. And who remembers that, the name of the spectacle, the city, what became of Chechnya, who brought justice, who brought death and who brought neither, and who both. Yet it happened, all the media covered it, and now it’s quite invisible, the paste behind the wallpaper.

And so I thought – that’s the theatre. Forget the stage, the musical. The spectacle is the moment, life, death, observing, passive. Victim. Agent.

Then I got lost. Reality they say is never intricate and confused. But I was stuck.

And so I thought – let’s take the actors – who are zeros. The dancers – who are bodies. The musicians – who make vibrations. Put them on the stage. And singers – who seem to speak and cry – and make us cry, though we don’t speak – what do they have, the singers are like elves, or sprites, they can’t be human, don’t eat and drink, or deviate, or think – but yet they work in words, they ‘speak’ to us.

We’ll put them all together – back on the stage. Forget the audience – a random bunch, distracted, sceptical, confused. ‘What’s all this stuff?’ they think, ‘I haven’t – or I have – seen it all before.’ And so I thought – the stage, the play.

 

*

 

Anatomy of error, Igor’s vision blurring. Mere play. What’s he done, I ask. A mountain, a farrago. It’s all content, everything is happening, all is burnt and flooded, live bodies are carried here and there, the genocide’s denounced, we mostly cry but sometimes laugh, we double up, we wish that we were dead, we wish that they were dead and so we needn’t pity them, that goddam catharsis for crimes and criminals we shouldn’t pardon – oh the tragedy of it all, we’re in and out of it, well, yes, the incest and the matricide we enter in the spirit, then we’re out again, ballets of paedophiles and forest creatures. What an imagination! Everything has happened and we’re satisfied, the bar has closed but all around are bars and dancing clubs, and maybe there’ll be sex or some new group.

 

*

 

So, Igor has a success, though not too many come, the crew is left without its pay, and no one suffers more than me, and every night it’s Armageddon, and we wander from Dust City up the mountains, here’s a ballet, ladies trying to be frogs, and there a prison or a work camp, and dust poured over us. And so it goes.

The Bright Stars think it’s fun, and play their tapes, I hear Mercedes being revved, reality is all around – some people even clap.

There is great noise below, and Katya has disappeared. I ask the Bright Stars. Johnny jokes, she’ll be back, cats wander off.

‘Katya the shapeshifting poledancer,’ says Dan.

Laptop adds, ‘Katya the polecat,’ but Marco says seriously, ‘Katya’s a tragic name,’ and the rest are silent. He goes on – ‘Exposure of her body – disposal of her body. It’s all linked up,’ mysteriously.

 

*

 

They all wear black T-shirts with white legends. They interchange, maybe to confuse – what, a witness? I see ‘our present story is now ended,’ Dostoevsky. ‘Vienne la nuit sonne 1’heure Les jours s’en vont je demeure’ Apollinaire, spelt wrong. ‘Les yeux d’Elsa les yeux d’Elsa les yeux d’Elsa’, and Laptop wears, ‘the bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie’.

‘Well, I recognise that one,’ I say.

‘Well, you would,’ Laptop says, ‘you having been to school.’

Marco promises, ‘We’ll watch for her,’ but I wish at least we had a body or a postcard. I see her walled up, in a trunk, even behind the marble, a goddess stepped in from the wrong fable – there’s so much noise you couldn’t hear a mew, my heart is beating like a pair of bongos, Igor’s rehearsing for some new adventure, and I hear Johnny, he says, ‘We had a vote regarding that politico.’

‘How did it go?’ I ask.

‘I was against,’ says Johnny, ‘Marco for. Dan and Laptop both indifferent, so of course we did it. Tried it.’

Laptop says, ‘We didn’t care about the contract – sewers, was it, railways underground – the contacts at the top were what we wanted – Johnny said he felt it was a burden.’

‘The guy’s a super zero,’ Johnny says, and Dan puts in, ‘And Katya, as his friend – she should have oiled that deal right through.’

Later I say to Igor, ‘I hope Katya didn’t offend our young guests from the depths,’ and he then turns on me, and says, ‘You don’t know how to treat a woman.’

‘Certainly I don’t! She didn’t want treating anyway,’ but then he rants against the Bright Stars – the noise, car fumes, the refugees, all for young punks ...

I say, ‘They pay for us,’ and he shouts on, that art should pay its way, if not, then the state and not some bunch of little criminals, but Katya’s still unfound, unheard from, and I wish her dead, uncertainty resolved, and Igor gives her up at once from jealousy, and ‘who’s this guy she’s friendly with, of course the Bright Stars wouldn’t tell me.’

Everyone’s reading headlines, ‘Premier in teens love romp,’ and the Bright Stars are censorious. ‘The tarts didn’t like their presents,’ says Johnny. ‘So beans got spilled.’

I insist with them about Katya, and a postcard arrives, it seems not in her hand (‘Maybe she fell,’ says Dan, solicitous) – it shows what may be the Cold Mountains, but we can’t read the print and the stamp’s been stolen. ‘It’s cold here, the mountains are high and cold. Here in the mountains, here one feels free. Do you remember, Katya.’

Remember what, I wonder, and I’m not convinced, but it’s enough to calm me, and I think, ‘The cops would take this as good evidence’, so ‘We’re all happy now,’ says Marco. ‘And besides, you’re foolish if you think politicos can cover you – they’ll throw you off the sled for sure.’

And Igor says, ‘Well, maybe she did want someone after all, not wanting me nor Milan, and not even our lads here. Now it’s all up to Elektra, who can paint the scenes, and Giulietta can be heroine for once.’

‘For Juliet she’s very young – very young to act that part,’ I say. I think, ‘From revenger tragedy to Romeo – how can Igor think of such a leap?’ but he’s impatient.

‘This is a play about pre-teens – think of all the males out there, they fantasise. I’m tired of shocking them – from shock to schlock I’ll go!’

Well, Igor thinks he’s some correctness to protect, integrity. It’s a thing a plumber has, but in the theatre – it’s all real, but if you get up on the stage and join in, you man of action, you’ll find it’s real within a hedge.

Igor goes on, staggering a little under his inspiration. ‘Franca will be Romeo. Besides, Giulietta’s only young as an actress – she’s just the right age for fantasy. And Elektra too will be Romeo – give it a little weight. The real Elektra kept things in the family – hung up on her brother, wasn’t it, something about the mother? Anyway, three women for two parts – will satisfy the critics.’

‘It sounds a hoot. Indeed, a pre-teen love romp.’

‘I’ve got big roles too – for the Bright Stars, especially for Marco. He’ll be Mercutio.’

I say, ‘I don’t think they’ll want to play themselves in public. They’ll be paying you to make them act,’ and I think of all that non-union labour, coming in cheap and losing us the crew.

I say, ‘A great discovery for the theatre maybe, but exposing them in such a tawdry way ...’

He considers this: ‘Can’t think why they go for such young chicks. Of course, the best age here is fourteen, fifteen, then they start to calculate.’

I say, ‘The Bright Stars aren’t in the love and cuddles business,’ and I think how after every masterpiece, the great creators try a Romeo, and Igor says, ‘We’ll let this one sit and simmer, then,’ but meanwhile things are happening and the Bright Stars brightly shine.

I tell Igor, ‘They’re warriors, they don’t do theatre,’ and maybe that’s why it’s incongruous to tell the police about them. Cops and warriors? Besides, all have their battle plans. Igor says,

‘Dan’s a driver. Bic – Laptop’s – a hacker. Warriors – I don’t think! As for you, you listen in to everyone. Where’s your discrimination?’

I say, ‘If you eliminate the warriors, you’ve all the so-called innocents, women and children in our society – hanging around and telling tales. Best eliminate the innocents – too many kids anyway, all aspiring warriors, and any woman here can look after a fistful of kids.’

Igor says, ‘It’s true the women spy. But I hear the Bright Stars had some trouble with a weedy guy, some Bruno. Spying. You’d better watch yourself. And Katya too.’

Who spies for who, I wonder, and was it Katya that I wanted, or was it just that she was wantable and free? And I laugh at this – we’re back in Romeo land, where not getting what you want is still a tragedy. And later, Marco says, giving himself more weight,

‘I think we bridge it all. We’re clearly of the right, but of course, the social right, coming from the social depths, I might say the dregs. You see the working stiffs, goddammit, how they work – and cry into their pasta every night. They’re in prisoners’ jail all right – trying to tunnel out, banging their heads on the walls. Not us. Red flag or black – we give the kids real bling, the girls can have fiancés with a bit of cash, even a Merc—’

I say, ‘But you’re the philosopher, the little king – it doesn’t have a cash price.’

He says, ‘Well, I settle for that,’ smugly.

Things are happening. The underground is filling up – the Romanians have gone, gilders are working on the marble, the Mercedes are junked, and Edsels and Chargers take their place – some garden statues, maybe by Praxiteles or maybe not, but anyway dredged up, corroded finely, and beneath the underneath there’s Chinese jewellers copying stuff, and we are all upmarket, and the guys who come to view wear sharkskin suits, and bodyguards and Raybans, and they pay in cash.

Vast projects are afoot. The point is now – to change the world. Enough understanding it!

Marco is exalted! ‘Buried treasure,’ he shouts. ‘Come and find it!’

Huge pits are dug. The earth moves. The periphery vanishes beneath piles of sod. The sewage, released, stinks. The underground becomes an Elevated. We are like a true Naples, as we should be, volcanoed, buried in our subsoil. Tepid, smelly, swarming with diggers, steel and human. Everyone’s employed – not a shovel stays on sale, the houses crack and yaw, the cars becalmed. It is a heavenly pause in a land of hell. The theatre shakes, it’s all too big for rhetoric.

‘What the devil?’ I ask Marco.

‘We’re burying our treasures! All this stuff – who knows who put it here – the temples, colossuses, the places where the rhinos died, and ostriches beheaded – delicate stuff, you realise – all that, Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians, Persians, Kushans too, I wouldn’t wonder and the guys from Arakan, sounds like a musical but it wasn’t—’ and he roars like a volcano at its moment of ejaculation. ‘Then the museums, galleries, the guys in uniforms, the experts that you never see, platoons of wild dogs among the ruins – that’s our treasure. All dug up. Gloated over.’

‘And for tourists, and the critics too – and guys with little badger brushes, cataloguing and that,’ I add.

He is in spate. ‘But you see – it’s all dug up – for what? The gods and goddesses are gone, they’ll never be returning – the nymphs that lived in laurels, those little stands of bamboo – all gone down, cemented over, the tombs defiled or carried off, the sacrificial animals without a tomb, a cross, a turban – nothing to recall those torrid afternoons of blood and booze,’ and he pauses.

I see he’s shouting at the Superintendent of Treasures, small, bearded guy – he that would keep our treasures visible.

And Marco says, ‘Look at the value these old things are sitting on! The prime sites, shopping malls and parks for kiddies, covered with this useless antique worn-out stuff, the blocks laid down by titans, water engineering – secrets all gone to purgatory, – never be restored,’ and he rants on. The Superintendent now is nodding, now he looks like puking, but he’s torn between his interest and his interests.

Marco concludes. ‘We’re burying it all. Maybe some day, they’ll dig it up again. And put it in the city centres – maybe the universities will pay. But for the while, we’ll lay them back – from glass cases to the alabaster dogbirds, from embalmed accountant to the beautiful lady mummies with their bones all poking through. Back to the earth.’

The Superintendent says feebly, ‘Tourists?’

Marco shouts, ‘Shopping! That’s what they want. And gawping at the poor. And maybe having their fat pockets picked. But shopping – that’s what they do, that’s what they want, and we will give it to them – no more boredom, picky steps around some goddam wall or peering at some squashed jewels or corpses. Who wants that on holiday? And you,’ he snarls at the Superintendent, ‘You, with your complaints – cement and speculation, vandalism, ignorance – we’ll solve your problems for you! Pack it all away. And if the Yanks decide to send another army – this time they won’t loot the lot – we’ll lay out parking for them for their tanks, and if it’s them or Chinese or Indians, whoever has the heaviest armour – we’ll save these treasures, safely deep. Occupying armies? They won’t spoil a thing. Our past can sleep – safe at last. No dog will dig it up again, sharp claws or not.’

And I think – lots of cash in the shopping centres.

And Marco adds, ‘And everyone is making bread – I mean, by digging. Bury this old crap, and build the new. Maybe give everyone a job, that would be a fine idea, when you’re making cities. Sticking in the architecture, tax offices, bus stops, all that stuff. Something to do! What a fine notion!’

He is illuminated, he is savant, Peter the Great and Constantine. Burier of the awful, the sweet, the stinking, city, bringer of death and bronchitis. Its absent gods, its load of burials.

The burial of the superfluous city took several weeks. Then we settled down. The Bright Stars were not mentioned, the media placed the praise and blame on politicians, and I saw Marco, concerned citizen, speaking on TV for both pros and cons. He said to me, ‘Old Hegel said “everything has its argument” and of course he’s right.’

 

*

 

A new campaign is started, Marco calls it ‘universal people’.

‘You see, there’s quite a lot of figures who are recognised by name across the world. In Italy, for instance, there’s a Romeo and Juliet house, and people come to stare. Now, you take Gandhi and Jesus Christ, Hitler and Buddha, Stalin and Beethoven and Chaplin and Monroe, and lots of heroines and heroes still among us – and we’ll consecrate to each a spot. Take Engels’s Leap, for instance – on the cliff, restrained by old Karl Marx – a marvellous scene. And you should know – at school you did that stuff,’ and wearily I say,

‘No, not me, I wasn’t there – it’s just the Serbian name I bear, but not the history, and anyway, it all slid off the backs of those who had to listen. Besides, it was Engels had his ashes tossed off Beachy Head, and Marx was dead, and neither of them suicidal,’ but Marco carries on,

‘Well, what you want? Authenticity? You know, the Yanks have spread throughout the world – places of pilgrimage for creatures who never did, who can’t, exist – Mickey and Minnie – find them everywhere. And novelists – now there’s a thing! You take your War and Peace – the battles that there really were, the people that there really weren’t. Where’s your reality factor? Or take your Lady with the Little Dog – a bit more specialised here – but ladies and their dogs, big ones as well – and who is there doesn’t have a favourite dog? We’ll have them walking up and down, and maybe they’ll want to turn a trick or two, they have apartments ready, and they chain the dog outside, unless of course ...’ and he winks slyly.

I say, ‘There’s no end to it. If you run short, invent a few more places and characters, and in the people go, movies and songs as well – a to and fro of people, as the money circulates, the millions come – the least familiar characters will be the most exotic – nomadism on immense scales, all in the name of culture.’

He takes me up, and gallops on, ‘Yes, and you’ll find that character begets more characters, more popularity – the best, the worst, saint and murderer, the singer out of tune, blind sword-swallowers, the paraplegic organist – you’re right: there is no end. It is another treasure, and we’ll build it all!’

‘We?’ I ask.

‘Our affiliates.’

‘It seems to me you soon will run the world, at least its wealth resources.’

‘Slowly, slowly,’ he says. ‘Too much success can put you in the frame. The target.’

 

*

 

The plans all take some days to realise, but everyone is keen, they work as if they’re making millions, but the daily rate goes down and down, and Marco says,

‘That’s classical economics for you – got to respect the classics,’ and he says to me, ‘I’ve got a plan for Bic and Johnny. What do rich kids want to do, since reading, writing, stuff at school, it grinds you down, and what’s the fun, and what’s the point? They want to hang out on the street, and maybe drink and smoke a little, stuff like that, and maybe play some pool and kick a ball around.’

I anticipate him. ‘Sport in schools?’

‘Old stuff. No, only sport – the only subject. Makes a lot of cash – no trouble now for poor and stupid guys – they understand what being good at games entails, it’s sinking balls and netting them. And since they’re amateurs, a little booze and smoke – that does no harm – you maybe give the concession to the school, a little bar, and one of ours to sell them junk to snort and smoke. And for those places where they don’t have teachers – sports agents, managers! – they’ll do the job, the cash comes in by selling guys to play in richer parts. And everyone is happy. On the street or on the field – see, there’s no distinction, no distinction too of class or colour, all that crap, the ones that kick those balls the best will reach the top, and even make it to be – one of our “eternal people”. Now, true, I can’t yet think of any athlete’s names, but that’s because I’m just ideas – that, and my comrades’ welfare. But, in one move, I’ve solved the problem both of poverty and school – both, until now, two dull experiences. Maybe one day I’ll do the same for all unsightly groups that don’t fit in our tourist round – those malcontents who don’t throw their culture in the universal hat and want to keep it to themselves. There’ll be an answer too, that isn’t just to kill or jail them all. I’m working on it – trouble is, the cash incentive isn’t there,’ and he looks sad and thoughtful.

 

*

 

I think of Elektra as – electric blonde. And Katya was dark as a mulberry. Elektra passing from Dan, perhaps to Bic, and now to Johnny. An awkward family history, matricide and incest – who’d call their child like that, Elektra, unless they were just ignorant.

Can’t say much for me, spy, at best observer. That’s what they call the spies until they catch them. But Igor’s the betrayer – first betraying me, that’s quite banal. But then, betraying Katya. To the Bright Stars, or doing it all herself.

Elektra’s quite a wit – I hear her tell a joke to Johnny. ‘There was this cat, and a guy who loved her, to distraction, really. And she went missing, missing for a week and he was crying every day, his life scooped out, and wondering where the hell she’d gone and why, what, where. And the cat meets another cat who asks her what she’s doing wandering about, she says, ‘People – they come and go, you can’t rely on them.’

And she laughs long, and Johnny stares and says it isn’t funny, not a bit.

Katya, the cat. Katya.

 

*

 

Igor says, ‘I’m not Russian, so I can forget the Chechens.’

I say, ‘I have no country. We both have fake names, which indicate nothing except history, a dark future for yours, no future for mine. Yet I remember the Chechens, and those who died with them. What more can I do?’

‘You can give me a hand with Romeo and Juliet,’ says Igor.

‘What’s the angle?’ Bic – Laptop – asks.

‘It’s about gangs,’ says Igor.

I say, ‘Then let’s not do it.’

Igor explains, ‘Two kids get their orders crossed, then – friendly fire.’

Dan guesses all the details: ‘Let the girls do it. We guys won’t. Besides, they’re part of it.’

Igor says, ‘That way it’s not dramatic.’

We discuss what might be dramatic, but nothing improves on our daily lives.

Dan says, ‘Well, Elektra’s got all her family stuff to happen. Lots of vendetta there.’

Laptop muses, ‘It’s not personal, just the way you get to live,’ and Dan agrees, ‘Just relations, everybody’s got them. Even whole countries.’

We all agree.

Dan says, ‘Elektra can do the play. It’s if she wants,’ and adds, ‘Johnny likes young flesh. The loyalty.’

Giulietta says, ‘At that age, my age, tastes are not set firm,’ and Franca says – she to be Romeo – ‘I hope mine never are. What I don’t see in this, is where’s the tragedy? Did the author guy get tired of writing? Was it a piece against the gangs, or parents? For us, the gangs sustain, a code ...’

And Giulietta says, ‘Like monks. Or nuns. But cleaner,’ then they both commiserate with poor Elektra – ‘They say she lost her mother, then her brother went all odd – she keeps herself confined within her jokes. She’s really comic, but inside she’s sad,’ and Igor says,

‘Who isn’t? That’s the great alibi – that what you see is what you get, and what you want, although somewhere hidden there is something else, twice as desirable but too good for you, you superficials clinging to our surfaces,’ and it’s true, you’d better not scratch off the paint, below

you’ll find the raw stuff, ruins, restorers’ stucco.

‘Well,’ says Igor, are you ready for the play?’

Franca says, ‘If I’m half of Romeo, I’d like to be the brash, the pretentious bit, it’s easier than the depths,’ and Igor says,

‘There isn’t any depth around, just poetry, the whole goddam theatre trade is made of potboilers, some well wrought – but in the end ... And maybe he should have stuck with a real tale of vengeance sought and suicide and states that kill – but after all, what changes? No one believes that stuff.’ And Igor with his clangs and bangs can’t change a thing, though better so, for if he was an active man, he’d rant us all to silence.

And Giulietta says, ‘I’ll do the role, if then I can have Bic.’

Igor says, ‘What the hell condition is that?’ And she says, ‘Well, the Bright Stars are my family – brothers and cousins here. And I choose Bic, the clever, or at least the skilful, one. The least demanding,’ and Igor spits and fumes, but has no promises to give, and Giulietta says ‘no deal’.

Marco is worried, ‘Success brings trouble. We’re not brigands, you can’t just sweep us away. Maybe we should be a little state. Lots of miniatures around, I’m sure our passports will go well. I think we’ll offer first a few thousand, discounted, then a hundred thou, full price. Protection and no taxes, just a help in business, and a flag. We’ll find a good big country to be nice to us – I think China – Russia has its hands full – somehow we’ll make out.’

I ask, ‘A flag with skull and crossbones?’ and he laughs,

‘That’s a part of it. Easier a state than found a religion, though I’d thought of that. The trouble with a new religion is there’s no room left – and no returns. Promises of paradise – you can’t propose that again, and what then is there left? Meditation you can do at home, we’ll bill you for the CD disc and carpet. Now, with Igor’s help, we have an epic – the three Juliets, tragically cut short, but winning the sympathy of every teen, and feminism as our creed. And every kind of bandit wants to be ambassador – embassy mail that’s snoop-free, and the palace – invited guests, and no one else.’ He’s quite poetic.

‘You’ll just go down the path again,’ I say, ‘some guys get voted in, or just show up, they’ll make the rules and kick you out – before you’ve breathed, you’ll be on trial, the mail is searched – and then you’ll find the gangs have filtered in and off we go again. History. Law. State.’

He says, ‘By then I’ll be long gone. Eternal return, it doesn’t bother me – you know it comes, you just keep running.’

‘Territory, Marco,’ I say, ‘You need some of that.’

‘The theatre, the welcome centre down below – and then below all that, the temples, stores, the catacombs, rivers and caverns, stuff you’ve never seen. And for the military stuff – we’ve got the red tank!’

He digs deeper in his fantasy, ‘Think of the Vatican – just a basilica and a post office. A state won’t protect us, but it gives a chance when you must fight. It can give the lost boys something to look up to,’ though he smiles wistfully. ‘Medals, deaths in action, and parades. Lots of parades, with bands and acrobats, and prelates. ‘Bags of pride’, like they say in the army. Stomping up and down. A zoo – important that, a hippo, tunnels of love, and candy floss, some apes. Remember all those plays they used to have – the wildest details, actresses in Greek boots, herds of invisible rhinos dashing through, the tramps, the scenes in hell – and not to mention operas. Now it’s all gone, the literalness, the real all fantasised – and now it’s up to Igor and his fiddling. And we shall see it once again, all culture put together, common language, all that stuff. The Bright Stars’ state – a skull, for sure, that’s on the flag – but then we’ll put some bright stars too – a kind of tinsel, shining and now and then a twinkling. Constant and true. An anthem – maybe some sweet rock, or – dare we try a blues? We saunter down the avenues, as cool as cool, and take a bock, under the lime trees, forever seventeen,’ and he is far away.

‘The lost boys?’ I ask.

‘Stay lost, I fear,’ he says. ‘But they shall have a flag to wrap around. Dead in action! No more philosophy, but – “dead on the field of honour”. Makes the blood run hot.’ He is fulfilled already, a patriot of one, his head, sliced at the neck, on coins of white recycled metal. It is beautiful. It is terrible.

 

*

 

Igor is angry. ‘They won’t see my play as their blood myth. The sex scenes would have pulled the crowds.’

‘The Bright Stars maybe don’t deserve you,’ I say.

‘You and I, we scan the broader scene,’ he says, the kindest thing he’s said since he made Katya a betrayer, before perhaps she went on to betray him. 

He says, ‘Marco, our Mercutio. Says being killed’s bad luck, so he won’t play.’

But Marco says he’s master of two worlds, order below, chaos above. ‘I hoped – I hope – to make a paradise – horses, rebirth. I fancy myself a hero, mounted, armoured.’

Something rests still in my memory, something he’ll not escape, will carry with him. His justice can be very rough indeed, and though his city moves, it’s mostly buried, sporting, shopping – what will become of it?

 

*

 

Then, we hear that Johnny’s dead. And there he is, a little broken envelope, left there on the threshold, so small, the smallest of the Stars, and dead, leaving only some black hole. The Stars come running – there’s no mark on him, but he has fixed the public works – the burying, conversion of the schools, and all those malls, some buried too, and some reared up like plate glass hills.

There is a ceremony newly invented. They’ll wall him up, just as he is, his Raybans droop, they jam the glasses back but he’s not looking – the anthem isn’t ready, as they can’t decide, one faction is for Mahler, the other favours ‘Jellyrolls’ – and here’s Elektra. We all keep well back, for grief can be a plague, but she’s quite quiet, a Star was born and now is fallen, and she tries some tunes, and in the end we have a wobbly ‘Che sarà, sarà’.

They put him in the wall, behind a marble slab that nearly kills its porters as it sways – I see an epitaph, it’s been drilled out – no name, no dates, just ‘This was one he couldn’t fix’, a star, a skull. It’s very delicate, and for a moment we all stand, are speechless, then thankfully we move away, and jokes are told and someone has a flask, and Johnny’s mind is somewhere else, if anywhere at all, and so ours too move off.

Elektra says, ‘I’ll have to move back with my mother, will she be wild!’

‘Her’ Johnny. Lover. Cousin? Brother?

Igor mutters, ‘Well, all the play’s a bit of rant, a teenage stabbing, and to cut things short – dealing with grief leads to a suicide – now we’ve discovered moving on, but that would take too long to show and anyway,’ he pauses and confides, ‘It lacks a bit of zip.’

I’m sure we’re sorry for old John, but circumstances being what they are, it’s best to wipe him out – an epitaph is better than an autopsy, revenge is quite another mode, and in the end, who cares if some young warrior, thug, is made to pay for Johnny’s death – the payment in this case. It can’t be cashed. But Marco has the leader’s touch, he says,

‘We’ll take the red tank out!’

He and I examine it. It is very red. Even the tracks are partly red. Marco says, ‘There must be ways to make it spew red smoke.’

We fiddle with the tank. It’s full of beastly stuff inside, for killing blind, and Marco says – ‘Maybe we’ll find a driver in the basement here,’ and off he goes, a brain on legs – his Mandarin is coming well, again I think how fine a mind he has, and he perhaps can read the thought, he says, ‘Well, Johnny could fix things when I told him to – at least I didn’t bomb warriors on camels,’ and he adds, as if he’s only now aware,

‘I’m off. I’m leaving. Igor will have to find his Big Idea all by himself.’

I’m amazed, I say, ‘But it’s all yours, this city.’

‘It’s rubbish!’ he says. ‘This state, flawed at its birth – as they all are – some ideal is lacking here. The pretty part is buried, all the rest is shopping and illliterates. How’ll they read my poetry?’

I am observer only, but the brain and soul of all this splendid modern ruin – it is his, is Marco’s. I ask,

‘How could the kids read their computer screens anyway,’ and he brightens.

‘We cut it down to symbols, like when you drive a car – just things to push and little picture signs. But poetry is different’, and although I’m glad he didn’t make me read it – me being businessman and manager, on it had gone to Igor, who had stacks of stuff awaiting judgement – like an appeals court judge. Then he says,

‘I’m off to look for Katya.’

And I’m even more amazed. ‘What would you do when you found her?’

He says, ‘Something would occur, singly or together – something we’d improvise. And when I find her, I’ll be back.’

I think, oh no, no second coming. I persist, I’d never thought of looking for a person, now it seems quite smart – ‘Where and how, what’s the starting point?’

He says, ‘Extreme humility – though I exclude the sandal look, the begging bowl, you’d not get far on those. We have affiliates, you know.’

‘But here, who’ll be the boss?’ I say. ‘If you’re not here, no one outside will understand.’

He must think I’m superficial, for he says, ‘Power isn’t found just in one knot in the net. The net itself is powerful – it’s all one. If I need power to find her – maybe luck’s enough – that I can rely on, from the net.’

My mind bubbles with questions. Where? the Cold Mountains? Where do free persons go, is there a country, town, or railway, some parking lot outside a bar where free spirits leave a note of where they’ve gone, and if you are to know?

He says, ‘Humility, and poverty – relative, of course. The places I’d most like to see – they’re probably the ones that she’d like most.’

That is true. And Dan and Bic the hacker now are all that’s left, the state is up and gasping – time to move on. This state is born of blood, as they all are – we’ll stick the law and morals on like plaster on a wound. And maybe Marco will find Katya, and her tragedy. Elektra is sad, sad to return to Mother, but Katya is a beast who’s left her cage and wanders waterless and desperate – it is right that Marco, warrior, poet, murderer, should start his quest now that his friend is dead. ‘The best fixer a man could want,’ says Marco.

The splendid entrance to the basement. The bronze doors open, and the tank trundles out – only black fumes, though Marco did his best to make them red. The tracks are squealing like two boars in heat. It seems they couldn’t reach agreement, and behind the Mahler I hear Jellyrolls.

Those doors will never close again, and off the tank goes, round and round the city – and soon there’s little kids on top and some end up beneath the tracks and Dan can’t stop the juggernaut, maybe he doesn’t want to as it’s firing now – they must be blanks, they say that every good revolution starts with firing blanks, but I’d don’t see a revolution here. And now some guys are firing back, and some are cheering as they shoot, and round it goes – I see that on the flag there’s Marco’s head, with Katya’s entwined, and so we’re for the family, in some way – though whether Katya is in a place where she can be found, I’ve some doubts, and Marco’s search – it may be epic but in fact he either knows, or else the search is fruitless.

And here’s Elektra and her mother. What does it all mean, the sadness, family, mother, child? I hardly want to hear. Destiny, choice – what cons!

I think the girl is pregnant. She’s just stopped painting, no more culture, maybe no more sadness and hysteria, the mother’s safe, perhaps it’s our success. That’s it, the end.

‘Not the real Elektra, then,’ I say.

‘What do you mean, real,’ she’s angry – her last trick, designed some coins, the new state bears the head of Marco, neatly decapitated. It all seems silly, this revenge and matricide and teenage love – all meaningless, hurting in one place, taking it out quite randomly on someone else. And if another Johnny’s born, he won’t be here alone, and though I’d like to say a Star is born, or will be, all we can see is how a state is roaring into being.

It’s irresistible, or at least it is for me, I’m tired of being Mr Zero and maybe I let out a scream or two, and Igor is quite wild with joy and rage and signs himself repeatedly – maybe a cross or could be anything, but now our tricky origins are quite submerged. Whatever it will be is rising from the ash, a monument of ash itself, at least they’re building something – place that was horrible at the start is now quite decorous, with marble, tombs and stuff.

It must be Laptop firing, and he’s found a new vocation – from reason into action in a moment – makes the gun traverse from plain to mall, and now he’s picking off the marksmen with the tank’s machine gun, and already there’s processions starting, dead in open coffins, as is right. The restaurants are overbooked, the tears are running out and everyone is angry, but without another tank there’s little they can do, the gangs are running short of men and ammunition, and it seems our side has won – there’s only two Stars left, but who’s to know – somewhere in China and entombed behind the walls there’s another couple – heroes, heroines, even poems and an anthem.

I fancy we shall do a play, and everyone will show, Elektra and her kid, and Johnny’s ghost and all the bosses and affiliates, all patriots for the evening, maybe a calmer flag – with Marco and his bride, whoever he has found, passing her off as Katya – the founder, shaper – triumphantly returned. And they’ll all celebrate, the booze is free, the pistols checked out at the door, and we shall all be one.

And there will be a special happening, in solemn procession, giving thanks, we’ll say: ‘Today is history, today is ours. Today is Red Tank Day.’