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Chapters (27)
  1. Contents
  2. About the Book
  3. About the Author
  4. Also by Howard Jacobson
  5. Dedication
  6. Title Page
  7. Prologue
  8. Part One
  9. Chapter I
  10. Chapter II
  11. Chapter III
  12. Chapter IV
  13. Chapter V
  14. Chapter VI
  15. Chapter VII
  16. Part Two
  17. Chapter I
  18. Chapter II
  19. Chapter III
  20. Chapter IV
  21. Chapter V
  22. Chapter VI
  23. Chapter VII
  24. Chapter VIII
  25. Chapter IX
  26. Chapter X
  27. Copyright

Later that same morning I surprised Camilla by going over to the window and opening the curtains. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked. ‘You’re not usually interested in daylight.’

I wasn’t either. I just wanted to check that it was still out there, and to remind myself of it, in the pubs and on the wharves and in the fishing boats and on the tractors – Camilla’s murky past and lineage, the madding crowd of her history and future, my Arcadia.

Chapter VIII

CHAPTER VIII

[1]

LIGHT, FILTERING THROUGH the iron bars of one solitary grilled window, loses itself amid the steam that rises from the bathtubs. The shuttered room is hushed except for the violent slaps of the masseurs and the wailing of the lunatics. The latter, male and female alike, wear only a strip of material tied about their loins. They gesticulate extravagantly. On a raised dais the ageing Marquis de Sade, ghastly in red lipstick and powdered whig, bares his back to the whip and retches asthmatically.

‘Despite the fact that murder was once the sole proof and reason of my being,’ he rasps, ‘the very idea of it now revolts and sickens me.’

To illustrate his meaning the lunatics give up their wailing and clutch their stomachs; from every bath and shower cubicle comes the sound of nausea and revulsion. The whip that has so far only twitched teasingly over de Sade’s surprisingly youthful back is now withdrawn in earnestness.

‘My own prognostications’ (Swish – Groan) ‘return to mock me. In the streets the women brandish the bloody severed genitals of hated men.’ (Swoosh – Moan) ‘Month after month the sharpened scaffold blade falls and falls again. My friend, all the spontaneity – aaagh! – has gone out of murder. Revenge – ouch! – has lost its fizz. Brutality has become merely technological.’

The girl who brandishes the whip encourages her breasts to spill out of her frail blouse. The colour of her nipples matches exactly the colour of the blood that runs down de Sade’s back. When she raises her arm once more the lunatics fall still and begin to imitate the whistling of the leather thong. They suck in air and rattle their tongues against the insides of their teeth, producing a chorus of sibilant vibration which swells to a crescendo until the moment the lash finally strikes de Sade. Whereupon they exhale their hisses as if to signal the departure from their bodies of spent souls. A moment of frozen silence and then they leap into gibbering exultation, like gibbons wearing diapers.

‘They’ve snitched that from the Aldwych production,’ Camilla whispers in my ear. ‘Only then, Glenda Jackson actually whipped Patrick Magee with her hair. Apparently it was her own idea. She suggested it to Peter Brook.’